Another shutter system is the leaf shutter, whereby the shutter is constructed of diaphragm-like blades and can be situated either between the lens or behind the lens. If the shutter is part of a lens assembly some other mechanism is required to ensure that no light reaches the film between exposures.
An example of a behind-the-lens leaf shutter is found in the 35 mm SLRs produced by Kodak, with their Retina Reflex camera line; Topcon, with their Auto 100; and Kowa with their SE-R and SET-R reflexes.
A primary example of a medium-format SLR with a between-the-lens leaf shutter system would be Hasselblad, with their 500C, 500CM, 500 EL-M (a motorized Hasselblad) and other models (producing a 6 cm square negative). Hasselblads use an auxiliary shutter blind situated behind the lens mount and the mirror system to prevent the fogging of film.
Other medium-format SLRs also using leaf shutters include the now discontinued Zenza-Bronica camera system lines such as the Bronica ETRs, the ETRs'i (both producing a 6 × 4.5 cm. image), the SQ and the SQ-AI (producing a 6 × 6 cm image like the Hasselblad), and the Zenza-Bronica G system (6 × 7 cm). Certain Mamiya medium-format SLRs, discontinued camera systems such as the Kowa 6 and a few other camera models also used between-the-lens leaf shutters in their lens systems.
Thus, any time a photographer purchased one of these lenses, that lens included a leaf shutter in its lens mount.
Because leaf shutters synchronized electronic flash at all shutter speeds especially at fast shutter speeds of 1/500 of a second or faster, cameras using leaf shutters were more desirable to studio photographers who used sophisticated studio electronic flash systems.
Some manufacturers of medium-format 120 film SLR cameras also made leaf-shutter lenses for their focal-plane-shutter models. Rollei made at least two such lenses for their Rolleiflex SL-66 medium format which was a focal-plane shutter SLR. Rollei later switched to a camera system of leaf-shutter design, (i.e., the 6006 and 6008 reflexes to name a few) and their current medium-format SLRs are now all of the between-the-lens shutter design.
How does a single lens reflex system work with a leaf shutter.? This question has puzzled me for years. The leaf shutter is in the front of the camera body, or inside the lens itself. So the shutter must be closed as not to let any light reach the film or sensor. So how does one view the image? The leaf shutter is in front of the morrow.
ReplyDeleteI once had a Retina lllc rangefinder superimposed focusing 35mm camera. It had a leaf shutter in front of the iris in the body of the camera. But that didn't matter because the camera was a rangefinder, and I wasn't looking directly through the lens itself. I was looking a viewfinder that had the same angle as the lens. Of course when you got close to a certain distance, you went off center (the parallex effect) But the viewfinder had lines inside to correct for this.
Anyway, how does an s.l.r. viewing system work with a leaf shutter?
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