Camera Shutter Timer
Approx construction cost US$19
Although digital cameras have been progressing rapidly in recent years, most people are still using traditional cameras. The quality of the finished result with traditional photography is dependent on a number of factors. One of these is the accuracy of the shutter, which is particularly important when using certain types of film.
It is not essential to use a complex digital timer to test camera shutters, and a very basic analog timer circuit is capable of providing accurate measurements in this application. The simple design featured here has four measuring ranges having full-scale values of 5ms, 50ms, 500ms, and 5 seconds. It can therefore be used to measure the full range of speeds covered by most cameras.
Although this unit is primarily designed for testing shutters, it should be possible to modify it for use in some other automatic timing applications. The light level on a sensor going above a certain threshold level activates the timer, but it can also be controlled by switch contacts.
More details on this construction project can be found in the July 2000 issue of EPE Online, the world's first web-delivered electronics and computing hobbyist magazine.
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