Photography has come a long way over the last 10 years. With our transition into digital photography, new techniques have been discovered, and work that once seemed impossible is being created on a day to day basis. Sure, we’ve seen the advances digital sensors have done for photography – but I want to talk to you about the forgotten technology leaf shutters.
My absolute favorite camera I’ve used in my career as a photographer comes in the Phase One IQ250 camera system. It’s medium format, costs a fortune, and has incredible dynamic range. That said, what impresses me more about the camera more so than anything else isn’t the camera body at all it’s the lenses it uses.
Phase One works with Schneider optics, who make a special blend of lenses for their medium format cameras, called leaf shutter lenses. Certainly the technology isn’t new or particularly innovative, as it dates back to as early as 1917, but in a modern camera, leaf shutter lenses are an oddity.
To put simply, leaf shutters are a standard camera shutter that work more like an aperture than a traditional shutter. Instead of closing from left to right or top to bottom, leaf shutters close within themselves, which is much more expensive to produce, but come with some pretty incredible perks.
For one, you get much faster sync speeds with strobes. If you’ve used strobe lighting before and shot faster than 1/200th a second (or 1/250th for many crop body sensors), you’ll notice that part of the frame is black. This isn’t a limitation of your strobe or anything like that, what you’re seeing is your physical shutter.
With leaf shutters, they are able to close in on themselves, using anywhere from 6 to 12 blades, which results in much faster opening and closing to expose the sensor to light. This means, when using a strobe in a bright environment, you’re able to shoot at much faster sync speeds without any problems, often as fast as 1/1600th of second. By taking advantage of that, you’re able to overpower the sun much more easily, while keeping your aperture open enough to have an distinct depth of field. You’re also able to freeze your subject better when working with higher shutter speeds. While strobes are designed to freeze the action in front of the camera, it has it’s own set of limitations when fighting with the sun. Faster shutter speeds will allow the sun to become less of an issue, thus stopping movement even better.
Sadly, leaf shutters are still a rarity within the photography community, as the shutter needs to be built into the lens itself, as oppose to the camera body. Which means that Nikon, Canon and other popular brands will take years to develop this system, as they would likely need to make a new camera mount entirely (or at least a new line of lenses to support the feature). That said, some brands have gone ahead to embrace the leaf shutter systems, such as the beloved Fujifilm X100 and X100s camera line a feature the felt was so important that they used a non detachable fixed lens to drive the feature home.
Perhaps this article is a little tongue in cheek, as I don’t expect the major brands to read this and think Okay, lets get to the drawing board. Nor do I expect anyone else to read this and invest into a $40k+ medium format system. However, what I do hope as that the leaf shutter continues to get support and interest from the photography community, and hopefully help bring them to a mainstream line of camera systems. Until then, I’ll have to use alternative to fighting the sun when using strobes, such as Neutral Density filters.
You know, this might be a silly question, but I’m wondering why we haven’t seen a shutter based on something like LCD technology — in other words, a clear panel that can be made opaque electronically. I’m guessing it’s pretty tricky to make current LCD tech that can be sufficiently transparent when “open” and sufficiently opaque when “closed”, but it seems like some variation on that idea would have tremendous benefits.
Lordy, you make me feel old! The thing you called a STANDARD SHUTTER has always been known to me as a ‘Focal Plane Shutter’. And I’m so far out of step that I didn’t realize what a gem I had in my old and beloved pre-WW II 127-film camera that used an Iris Shutter, as did many cameras up to about 1960.
Thanks for posting this piece. It may be true that “what goes around … comes around”.
One of the reasons I purchased a Leica D-LUX (typ 109) was the leaf shutter. I needed the 4K, but I wanted the leaf shutter – I’ve missed it since I sold off my Bronica system decades ago. It baffles me this wonderful piece of old technology has gone missing since the days of TLRs.
Olympus was possibly the first to introduce full-synchro flash, but its range is so limited it’s not funny, so I welcome back the leaf shutter.
Thanks for the explanation on leaf shutters. I’d heard of them, but never knew what they were. Looking at the animations, I have one question. How do the leaf shutters get an even exposure? The “standard shutter” opens top-to-bottom, and closes top-to-bottom, so every part of the sensor (or film) gets even exposure. If the leaf shutter opens from the center outward, and then closes from the outside inward, wouldn’t the center get more exposure than the outer edge?
Think about the evenness of exposures made at various aperture settings; regardless of diameter, light through any of these openings is spread more or less uniformly across the entire sensor. F/22 does not just illuminate a small circle on the center of the sensor, nor does f/2.8 illuminate a big circle. Both settings illuminate the whole sensor, the latter more brightly than the former. The leaf shutter is, in effect, a circular aperture that changes diameter continuously. When it is just starting to open (or just about to close) it allows only a small amount of light to enter, but… Read more »
Great explanation, Bob!
At first read, Luke’s question seems valid, but the fact that the sensor/film is always completely illuminated in the case of leaf shutters is so basic, it’s easy to overlook!
It was more than year ago, but I’m curious about something. If leaf shutter is like an aperture changing its diameter wouldn’t it change depth of field and sharpness of image? I mean if we have our aperture fully open, shutter is starting eg. with f/22, then goes down through 11, 8, 6.3… and up to fully close. It spends a bit in all of those settings. At fully open shutter it spends I guess the most time, but it depends on set time, eg at 1/500 it might be same time as at rest of diameters. You told that… Read more »
Keep in mind that, just like lenses on focal plane shutter cameras, leaf shutter lenses also have a diaphragm that is separate from the shutter. At f/22 that diaphragm would allow only light from the center of the lens to pass through; these would be the rays of light from any point on the subject’s surface that are traveling most nearly parallel to each other. These nearly parallel rays require the least amount of refraction to be brought back together to re-form a point of illumination, and so they create the smallest circle of confusion if their origin lies behind… Read more »
Phase One achieves these amazing sync speeds by adding the “virtual shutter” feature. A simple Leaf Shutter would be Hasselblad (max speed sync of 1/800s).
Electronically switching on and off the sensor will ultimately always be faster, and will likely be the route of the future. Physically moving things in front of a sensor to block light really is 19th/20th century technology… not something of the future. The Nikon D90 (if I recall correctly) offered this feature by combining a physical shutter and an electronic shutter, but I believe it has been removed in later cameras, probably because they can make more money by selling their branded flashguns with High Speed Sync settings.
I have missed the leaf shutter however with the new high speed sync feature built into portable/studio flashes like ProFoto B1 and Photix Indra 500, I don’t see the need for the leaf shutter anymore as I can use them with shutter speeds all the way up to 1/8000 sec. with a lot of power while using my Canon.
Technology is a beautiful thing!
so quick question, how is it faster if the shutter must come to a complete stop before reversing directions to close, is it similar to the standard shutter in that there are two curtains? I feel like one linear movement is more efficient for speed than one that is converted into another direction and then has friction with itself (the other leaves). I’m not an engineer, so i don’t know for sure. I’d just like to understand how the physics allow for it to be faster when it seems counterintuitive. A little more explanation on how that works would be… Read more »
It doesn’t need to come to a complete stop for an image to start forming. If you’re wide open on an f/2.8 lens, a leaf shutter will effectively quickly go from completely closed through a virtual f/22, f16, f/11, f/5.6, f/4 to arrive at f/2.8 (ie. the shutter is wider open than the iris on the lens), hold for the duration of the shutter speed required, then reverse the procedure. It moves sufficiently quickly that you wouldn’t see any significant effect of increased depth of field in images, because every stop the lens is opened brings in far more light,… Read more »
For those interested, the modern Sigma DP series of fixed-prime-lens cameras all use leaf shutters.
i also love my sony rx1r for the leaf shutter in combination with profoto strobes.
LOL – The future is in global shutters not leaf shutters nor focal plane shutters.
It is al going to be digital. These new sensor based shutters are only a generation (perhaps two) generations away.
There is NO future for mechanical shutters.
Lordy, you make me feel old! The thing you called a STANDARD SHUTTER has always been known to me as a ‘Focal Plane Shutter’. And I’m so far out of step that I didn’t realize what a gem I had in my old and beloved pre-WW II 127-film camera that used an Iris Shutter, as did many cameras up to about 1960.
Thanks for posting this piece. It may be true that “what goes around … comes around”.
You know, this might be a silly question, but I’m wondering why we haven’t seen a shutter based on something like LCD technology — in other words, a clear panel that can be made opaque electronically. I’m guessing it’s pretty tricky to make current LCD tech that can be sufficiently transparent when “open” and sufficiently opaque when “closed”, but it seems like some variation on that idea would have tremendous benefits.
One of the reasons I purchased a Leica D-LUX (typ 109) was the leaf shutter. I needed the 4K, but I wanted the leaf shutter – I’ve missed it since I sold off my Bronica system decades ago. It baffles me this wonderful piece of old technology has gone missing since the days of TLRs.
Olympus was possibly the first to introduce full-synchro flash, but its range is so limited it’s not funny, so I welcome back the leaf shutter.
Electronically switching on and off the sensor will ultimately always be faster, and will likely be the route of the future. Physically moving things in front of a sensor to block light really is 19th/20th century technology… not something of the future. The Nikon D90 (if I recall correctly) offered this feature by combining a physical shutter and an electronic shutter, but I believe it has been removed in later cameras, probably because they can make more money by selling their branded flashguns with High Speed Sync settings.
It doesn’t need to come to a complete stop for an image to start forming. If you’re wide open on an f/2.8 lens, a leaf shutter will effectively quickly go from completely closed through a virtual f/22, f16, f/11, f/5.6, f/4 to arrive at f/2.8 (ie. the shutter is wider open than the iris on the lens), hold for the duration of the shutter speed required, then reverse the procedure. It moves sufficiently quickly that you wouldn’t see any significant effect of increased depth of field in images, because every stop the lens is opened brings in far more light,… Read more »
so quick question, how is it faster if the shutter must come to a complete stop before reversing directions to close, is it similar to the standard shutter in that there are two curtains? I feel like one linear movement is more efficient for speed than one that is converted into another direction and then has friction with itself (the other leaves). I’m not an engineer, so i don’t know for sure. I’d just like to understand how the physics allow for it to be faster when it seems counterintuitive. A little more explanation on how that works would be… Read more »
For those interested, the modern Sigma DP series of fixed-prime-lens cameras all use leaf shutters.
i also love my sony rx1r for the leaf shutter in combination with profoto strobes.
Phase One achieves these amazing sync speeds by adding the “virtual shutter” feature. A simple Leaf Shutter would be Hasselblad (max speed sync of 1/800s).
LOL – The future is in global shutters not leaf shutters nor focal plane shutters.
It is al going to be digital. These new sensor based shutters are only a generation (perhaps two) generations away.
There is NO future for mechanical shutters.
Thanks for the explanation on leaf shutters. I’d heard of them, but never knew what they were. Looking at the animations, I have one question. How do the leaf shutters get an even exposure? The “standard shutter” opens top-to-bottom, and closes top-to-bottom, so every part of the sensor (or film) gets even exposure. If the leaf shutter opens from the center outward, and then closes from the outside inward, wouldn’t the center get more exposure than the outer edge?
Think about the evenness of exposures made at various aperture settings; regardless of diameter, light through any of these openings is spread more or less uniformly across the entire sensor. F/22 does not just illuminate a small circle on the center of the sensor, nor does f/2.8 illuminate a big circle. Both settings illuminate the whole sensor, the latter more brightly than the former. The leaf shutter is, in effect, a circular aperture that changes diameter continuously. When it is just starting to open (or just about to close) it allows only a small amount of light to enter, but… Read more »
Great explanation, Bob!
At first read, Luke’s question seems valid, but the fact that the sensor/film is always completely illuminated in the case of leaf shutters is so basic, it’s easy to overlook!
It was more than year ago, but I’m curious about something. If leaf shutter is like an aperture changing its diameter wouldn’t it change depth of field and sharpness of image? I mean if we have our aperture fully open, shutter is starting eg. with f/22, then goes down through 11, 8, 6.3… and up to fully close. It spends a bit in all of those settings. At fully open shutter it spends I guess the most time, but it depends on set time, eg at 1/500 it might be same time as at rest of diameters. You told that… Read more »
Keep in mind that, just like lenses on focal plane shutter cameras, leaf shutter lenses also have a diaphragm that is separate from the shutter. At f/22 that diaphragm would allow only light from the center of the lens to pass through; these would be the rays of light from any point on the subject’s surface that are traveling most nearly parallel to each other. These nearly parallel rays require the least amount of refraction to be brought back together to re-form a point of illumination, and so they create the smallest circle of confusion if their origin lies behind… Read more »
I have missed the leaf shutter however with the new high speed sync feature built into portable/studio flashes like ProFoto B1 and Photix Indra 500, I don’t see the need for the leaf shutter anymore as I can use them with shutter speeds all the way up to 1/8000 sec. with a lot of power while using my Canon.
Technology is a beautiful thing!