Slow motion camera shutter - Canon 5D Mark II 2,000 fps
Why Photography Stack Exchange recommends it
Photo Stack Exchange answerers point people to it as a visual reference for how a DSLR mirror and focal plane shutter move, including why fast shutter speeds behave like a rolling shutter.
Recommended by 2 people across 2 different months, 2012 to 2024.
What it is
A 40-second high-speed clip of a Canon 5D Mark II taking a photo, filmed at 2,000 frames per second with a Redlake N3 camera. It shows the mirror lifting, the shutter curtains opening and closing, and the mirror dropping back, and the uploader notes the top of the frame is exposed slightly before the bottom.
What people said
Recommends percusse · 2012-05 · Photography Stack Exchange · on “How does the mirror in a DSLR operate?”
To complement it with some videos to see the mirror in action please have a look at the following ones among many more... [LINK] [this video]
Recommends osullic · 2023-08 · Photography Stack Exchange · on “Silent timelapse with Canon EOS”
I think the noise you could hear was not the mirror flipping up and down, but rather the shutter itself opening and closing. This is "part and parcel" of how a (D)SLR takes a photo. The fact that moving parts make a noise is simply physics. Take a look at this video showing the process in slow motion. It shows both the mirror flipping up, as well as the shutter opening and closing. Slow motion camera shutter - Canon 5D Mark II 2,000 fps [this video] Some newer cameras have a mode called "electronic shutter" where a frame is "grabbed" from the sensor without using the physical moving mechanical shutter. If silence is really critical for you, then you may need to obtain a new camera body with this
Cites Edd · 2012-01 · Photography Stack Exchange · on “What are the physical limits of a mechanical shutter?”
Just as an example, here [this video] 's a YouTube video of a Canon 5D Mk II shutter at 1/2000 of a second, shot on a 2000fps camera.
Cites Michael C · 2014-04 · Photography Stack Exchange · on “Are the black blobs on these pictures indicative of shutter failure?”
It initially looked to my eye more like it might be something else in the mirror box that is not moving out of the way fast enough, most likely a part of the secondary mirror assembly. The secondary mirror sits behind the main reflex mirror and reflects light into the AF sensor. But if you are experiencing this problem even when using mirror lockup then that possibility is eliminated. At slower shutter speeds the offending part is clear of the field of view for most of the exposure time. At speeds above flash sync speed the transit time of the shutter curtains is pretty much the same, the only difference between 1/500 and 1/8000 is the width of the slit between the first and second curtain -
Cites Kahovius · 2019-12 · Photography Stack Exchange · on “Can high/fast shutter speeds have negative IQ results?”
Depending on how IQ is defined [LINK] , the following may also be a concern: a focal plane shutter becomes a rolling shutter at fast speeds (see this slow motion video [this video] ) and is then susceptible to various rolling shutter distortions [LINK] . For instance, here's an animation of a rolling shutter capturing a rotating disk: [LINK] (Image credit: cmglee [LINK] , CC BY-SA 3.0)
Cites Oddthinking · 2024-08 · Photography Stack Exchange · on “Which direction is the rolling shutter on a Canon 5D?”
(I worked something out from first principles, and it surprised me, so I am hoping for some confirmation I got the details right, or a correction if I got them wrong.) This high speed video of Canon 5D Mk II [this video] 's shutter action shows that when taking still photos, the first curtain opens up by sliding down from the top of the camera, following shortly afterwards by the second curtain. For short shutter speeds, it forms a slit that exposes from the top of the sensor to the bottom. Because lenses invert the image onto the sensor, this means the bottom of the image is the first part to be exposed. However, this video of a rolling shutter test on a Canon 5D Mk IV [LINK] (associated article