{"id":32838,"date":"2025-11-25T01:03:03","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T05:03:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/?p=32838"},"modified":"2025-11-22T22:56:46","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T02:56:46","slug":"a-tale-of-the-shutter-tester","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/a-tale-of-the-shutter-tester\/","title":{"rendered":"a tale of the shutter tester"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

a nifty shutter tester once sold to members a quarter century ago<\/p><\/div>\n

Toronto<\/strong>. Editor Bob Lansdale published a number of extra page journals to celebrate our 25th. In issue 25-4, Past President, the late Ron Anger, wrote an article titled, “The Shutter Tester” (back then, camera collectors and users often attempted to determine the speed and condition of a camera’s shutter).<\/p>\n

Popular photography magazines of the time occasionally offered ways one could test a shutter. Mr Toding went even further, creating a device to test any camera shutter.<\/p>\n

Ron begins his story thusly, “About five years ago [1995] an old fellow approached me at our PHSC camera fair and asked, ‘Could I sell a shutter tester?’. This is how I first met Mr. Toding. He left his phone number and an invitation to visit his workshop located in the attic of his bungalow home in the Bayview\/Eglinton area.<\/p>\n

“On my first visit I perused\u00a0a miniature Unimat <\/i>lathe from Austria\u00a0which had been modified with a bigger\u00a0motor from Active Surplus on Queen\u00a0Street and a direct drive belt replacing the\u00a0original elastic rubber one. ‘I sometimes\u00a0repair the early Contaxes’, he declared.<\/p>\n

“Getting around to the shutter tester, I\u00a0could buy them at $50 each. This obviously meant he was manufacturing the\u00a0units right here in the attic. The tester consisted of a grey metal\u00a0box with a six figure digital readout and\u00a0six solid state chips for the oscillator and\u00a0counter. To operate it, you place the camera on a bracket that lines up with a light\u00a0source.<\/p>\n

“A cell is positioned behind the\u00a0shutter to pick up the light coming\u00a0through the lens. All the instructions were\u00a0there along with a chart to correlate the counter reading in milliseconds to camera shutter. I took away three testers and sold hem at the next camera show.” …<\/p>\n

You can read all of the illustrated ‘Shutter Tester’ article in the issue 25-4 pdf file on the free members’ only DVD\/thumb drive. See above and at right to join (it’s easy and inexpensive). Questions on membership can be emailed directly to Lilianne at member@phsc.ca<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toronto. Editor Bob Lansdale published a number of extra page journals to celebrate our 25th. In issue 25-4, Past President, the late Ron Anger, wrote an article titled, “The Shutter Tester” (back then, camera collectors and users often attempted to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1944],"tags":[2017,398,679],"class_list":["post-32838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","tag-article","tag-camera","tag-shutter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32838"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32843,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32838\/revisions\/32843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}