Compact Camera’s Shutter Mechanism Tested for its Top Speed

If you think 14fps on a high end DSLR is fast, check out this video by Mike’s Electric Stuff. In it, he does an extreme teardown of a cheap Panasonic Lumix compact camera and spends 30 minutes exploring and explaining the various components.

At about 18 minutes in, he hooks up a signal generator to the shutter mechanism to see how fast the shutter can flap. He’s able to take it up to around 70 flaps per second before the shutter begins to stutter. The limiting factor in FPS isn’t the mechanical components of a camera, but how fast the sensor and memory card can capture and store data.

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