This video explores a unique piece of technology from the 1930s used by Leica camera technicians to measure camera shutter speed with incredible precision. Through interactions at the Camera Store in Finland, viewers learn the intricacies of maintaining classic camera technology and the inventive tools developed during the early 20th century to ensure cameras functioned at their best. Insights are provided into how old and new technologies intersect, enhancing understanding of camera mechanics using both analog and digital techniques.

The film captures the passion and expertise of individuals preserving analog photography equipment and culture. By diving deep into the operations of the Camera Store and the Camera Rescue Project, it reveals the dedication and knowledge involved in keeping historical camera designs alive. The video is a journey of exploration into the past, illuminating the innovative methods engineers utilized to achieve millisecond accuracy in shutter speed testing with basic tools available at the time.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. stroboscope [ˈstroʊbəˌskoʊp] - (noun) - A device used to make a cyclically moving object appear to be slow-moving or stationary. - Synonyms: (flicker device, flashing light, light oscillator)

It's a mechanical stroboscope.

2. rolling shutter [ˈroʊlɪŋ ˈʃʌtər] - (noun) - A method of capturing images using electronic sensors to read the picture line-by-line rather than all at once. - Synonyms: (sequential capture, progressive scan)

You basically use that same effect as rolling shutter.

3. millisecond [ˈmɪlɪˌsɛkənd] - (noun) - A unit of time equal to one-thousandth of a second. - Synonyms: (moment, fraction of a second, instant)

That was a millisecond

4. persistence of vision [pərˈsɪstəns əv ˈvɪʒən] - (noun) - A phenomenon where the eye retains an image for a split second longer than it appears, allowing for the perception of movement in motion pictures. - Synonyms: (visual retention, optical illusion, afterimage)

And we can draw the picture that you would see with persistence of vision with your eye.

5. aliasing [ˈeɪliəˌsɪŋ] - (noun) - A visual phenomenon where a rotating object appears to be moving at a different speed or direction than it physically is due to under-sampling or strobing lights. - Synonyms: (optical illusion, visual distortion)

There's a thing called aliasing.

6. calibrate [ˈkælɪˌbreɪt] - (verb) - To adjust or set a system, instrument, or device to function accurately or within a standard measure. - Synonyms: (fine-tune, adjust, standardize)

So you use aliasing to calibrate something that you can then use rolling shutter to then use persistence of vision to create a pattern, if that's what your brain is doing, or your eye

7. intolerances [ɪnˈtɒlərənsɪz] - (noun) - The allowable variations in dimensions or measurements for proper functioning of a device. - Synonyms: (discrepancies, deviations, variances)

This ratio of the size of these patterns, then you can determine if it's kind of intolerances.

8. analog [ˈænəˌlɔg] - (adjective) - Relating to data or information represented by a continuously variable physical quantity. - Synonyms: (non-digital, manual, traditional)

But whoever designed this technique added all this stuff up to be able to measure an analog device to millisecond accuracy

9. phenomenon [fəˈnɒmɪnən] - (noun) - A remarkable occurrence or fact that is observed to happen. - Synonyms: (event, occurrence, happening)

There is a thing called aliasing.

10. ingenuity [ˌɪndʒəˈnuːɪti] - (noun) - The quality of being clever, original, and inventive. - Synonyms: (creativity, innovation, inventiveness)

And that blows my mind that a human came up with that. I think it's amazing and beautiful.

How the Germans Measured Milliseconds MECHANICALLY - Smarter Every Day 283

So this is from the 30s, right? So this is very old, very old technology. You can put it on by turning it here. What? Yeah. And then there's this kind of stroboscope type of. It's a mechanical stroboscope. Yeah, yeah. There is a light bulb in the middle of drum that has exact amount of, like, these grooves. And it has to be rotating in certain feed value. And then you can get accurate results from this.

So how does it work? So. So this is our source. Yeah. How do we. We have to have feedback. So how do we measure? Yeah, yeah. There's this kind of. You just look through this image port, and then you can get very. Oh, so you do it with your eyes? Yeah. Oh, I saw it. Oh, it's rolling shutter. Yeah. You basically use that same effect as rolling shutter.

You use rolling shutter with your eyes? Yeah. Can I see again? Okay. There's no way my camera's gonna do this. Yeah, yeah. It's difficult to shoot. Okay. This machine is amazing. And I know I haven't explained what you're looking at yet, but that's how I experienced it. I wanted you to feel that, too. This is what's going on. So back in the early 1900s, the people that made Leica cameras made the undisputed best cameras in the entire world. But they had a problem.

They have this little thing right here on top. They. You know a camera shutter works like that. Right. But they have this little dial right here. And check this out. Let's see if I can focus my camera. That dial lets you dial the shutter speed of the camera, and then you wind the camera, and then you fire the thing. Boom. The time that that shutter is open is critical, because if the shutter speed is open for too long, you overexpose the image and everything gets really blurry. But if the shutter speed is open too short, then your image gets dark like this, and it doesn't work.

So this is just for, like, the motion camera I'm using here, but for a still image, this is even more important. So that says 1 1000th of a second. That was a millisecond. It's very fast. So if you're an engineer in charge of tuning these cameras to make sure they're spot on and millisecond. How would you do that? Measuring a millisecond mechanically, that's what this machine does.

So show me what we should be seeing. Okay, so that's the frame. Yeah. And then you see kinds of grooves there and that. You should check out the console. So it's not just a line. It's also a shape. Yeah, it's a curve. So can you show it one more time? Yeah. So you look through the image port underneath. Okay. So you see diagonals and you count. Yeah. Yeah.

So I'm gonna turn this off. Can I turn it off? Yeah, from here. And then turn it back on so you can see it rotating, starting up. Look at that. Yeah. Okay, so you can kind of see it in my. In my camera. You see that? Yeah. All right, here, let me. Let me switch my modes on my camera. So let me go to shutter speed. Let's see if we can get this. Yeah. Okay, we're starting to get it. Hold on. We're gonna get this. Sorry. Okay, so. Nope, that's. Here's my shutter speed. 250. I'm gonna go.

Okay. Yes. Did we get it? This image is all a camera technician needed back in the 1930s to instantaneously assess whether a camera like this is functioning properly. But before I explain how that works, I realized I haven't even told you where we are. Okay. So a while back, I connected on Instagram with a guy named Juho, who, it turns out, is somewhat famous in Finland for driving with some friends in a van from Finland to Kathmandu, Nepal.

Clearly, Juho is an interesting person, and it ends up we have a lot in common with our interest and beliefs. He started a company in Finland called Camera Store. That's Camera with a K, and it restores and sells old film and digital cameras. They also run what's called the Camera rescue project. I love film photography. So I found myself scootering across the town of Tempera, Finland, to the shop where Camera Store does all its work.

They buy old cameras from people who may have them in storage, and they service them and get them back to complete work order. What's interesting about this company is that the people who love this kind of work are extremely passionate, and they come from all over the world. I spent two days learning about all they do, and I was blown away by the complicated things they figured out to keep these precious mechanical marvels alive.

After a couple days, Juho had me figured out. He knew I would fall in love with this machine, so he introduced me to Ari and the Leica repair team, and then we got to dig into this machine. So after some digging, Ari has come up with the tools that we need, correct? Yeah. Okay. So we have the book. What is this book? Yeah.

So this is a service manual which we have, and we can read from there how you should test Those shutter speeds correctly. My German is very bad. I don't see Kartoffel on here or knotwurst or anything like that. So is your German good? No, no, I'm not very good. Very good in German. But essentially what it looks like is we have the exact patterns that we were trying to draw earlier.

This ratio of the size of these patterns, then you can determine if it's kind of intolerances, if the speed is intolerances. Back in America. Ridiculous setup. For years when I've done slow motion, I've used these lights right here, little halogens. Oh, it's obviously on its last leg. But a company called Nanlux reached out and said they had a light that doesn't flicker and they would let me use it.

It is very difficult to tell how much light this thing is throwing because my camera is metering. But this is an absolute ton of light. And I'm excited to see how she performs today. Check this out. We've got a phantom high speed camera. We're gonna be running at 20,000 frames per second. And we've got this Leica camera that I got from Finland. Juho and company sent this over to me.

Wind it like this. And then you push this button right here. And that fires the shutter, which is the curtain type setup. And then we have a fancy like ketchup bottle with a line 3000 here. So this is the line onator 3000 we'll call it. So first of all, I want to show you what it looks like to just fire this thing. So let's turn the light on like crazy here.

Fire it. I'm going to trigger the high speed camera, the shutter, as it opens one curtain and closes the other here. Let's see what that looks like. Very slow, 20,000 frames per second. So you can see the first door, if you will, the shutter opens up and then the second one is following shortly behind it. You see that? But it's moving left to right as we have it set up here.

That's interesting, isn't it? So we have two curtains. It's literally a rolling shutter. It's rolling from one side to the other. So that's what the shutter itself looks like. And now let's go do it with my crazy ketchup bottle contraption.

Let's check this out. All right, so before I show you this, you remember a long time ago, I made a rolling shutter video on Smarter every day. And we did all kinds of things. You could see a propeller rotating and what a rolling shutter does to that. And we explored things like coins rolling, little fidget spinners. That's kind of the principle that I'm trying to demonstrate here.

Oh, shoot. How do I do this? Okay, so. Oh, no. Oh, no. Please work. Oh, no. Okay, still works. It's good. I've got to trigger both, don't I? There we go. Gonna rotate this and go. We'll see if I did that. So let's look at what this thing looks like here. As the shutter opens. Are you gonna open? Oh, my timing is off.

You see, my line is off. Okay, but you can't see it rolling. Oh, I need more lines. How many do I need? What do you want to do when you grow up? I want to draw lines on ketchup bottles to explain rolling. Shutter to myself checks out. Okay, wind the camera. Get ready. See how that looked? Weirdly excited about this. All right. I don't know if you woke up wanting to see this, but now I know you really want to see this.

All right, here we go. Let's roll this thing. All right. Oh, there we go. We got multiple stripes already. Three stripes. We're going to get four. Four. Go for five. Go for five. Got a fifth. Yeah. Okay. All right. So that was fun.

Okay, so here's what we can do. We can play it, and then we can use an additive animation technique to show exactly how it adds up. And we can draw the picture that you would see with persistence of vision with your eye. That image looks very similar to what the thing looks like, doesn't it? I love this, and I think it's fantastic.

So had we known the rotational rate of the ketchup bottle, which, by the way, you time the rotational rate of that thing in Finland by the strobe effect. There's. There's a thing called aliasing. If you can have a strobing light and another thing, they match up. It's kind of like on a record player.

On a record player, there's these little dots on the perimeter of the record player, and there's a little strobing light. And as you dial the rotational velocity of the record player up and down for your music tempo, if it's rotating at the correct velocity, the strobing light on the side will line up with the spinning dots on the side. If you're going too slow, they appear to be moving one direction. If you go too fast, they appear to be moving the other direction. You're adjusting the belts here. Yeah. And then this is moving. You can't see this, but it's aliasing, essentially. It's moving like this. Right now it's rolling upwards. Yeah.

So then you. Can you adjust it to get the right speed? Yeah, I currently don't see it from this angle, but then you can adjust it so it doesn't roll to either direction. Okay, now it's correct. So you use aliasing to calibrate something that you can then use rolling shutter to then use persistence of vision to create a pattern, if that's what your brain is doing, or your eye. I don't know how. I don't know if persistence of vision is in the brain or in the eye. But whoever designed this technique added all this stuff up to be able to measure an analog device to millisecond accuracy. And that blows my mind that a human came up with that. I think it's amazing and beautiful.

So at this point in time, what I'd like to do is go back to the camera rescue project at the camera store in Finland. It's actually camera store, not. I don't know. This is the website. Let's go back there and let's see how we use this to measure a mechanical camera shutter down to the millisecond accuracy. I think this is amazing. Let's go check it out.

Okay. ARRI has a phone that has an electronic rolling shutter. Yep. Now, the difference in the electronic rolling shutter and the film rolling shutter on the Leica is. The Leica has a spring in it that's driving it. So he has to accelerate the shutter and then decelerate the shutter. But the electronic shutter is linear, right? Yep. So that's 2 50th.

1. 2 50th, yeah. Yeah. Can you change it to 1 500, please? That's 1 500. Okay. And now to 1 1000. Okay. Can we look at the difference in those three photos? So it's getting wider. Yeah. But we're not seeing the curve. And I think the reason is that this is being driven by a spring. Does that make sense? Yeah.

This is what we're going to do. So we have two cameras. One of them has been serviced. So we know that this one has a good shutter. Correct. And then we have this one. Yeah. Which is not a Leica, but it has not been serviced. You just got this. Yeah, I just took it from there. So it's kind of. There gonna be issues with. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna test these.

I have the camera set up with a long exposure time. So let's turn this thing on. Yep. All right. Yep. All right. So let's go 251st. Keep going 250 till we get the shots. It's pretty good. Okay, going to 500. Yep. And then lawn policy. Yep. Okay, so we'll put up the screen captures of that. We have 250, 500, 1,000. And you're going to compare that to what it should be, right? Yeah. It was totally the same. Totally the same. Totally the same.

So now we're gonna test this camera. Yep. 250. Okay. Yeah, that's 250. Yep. Looks pretty good. Yep. Then how about 500? Looks quite okay. Move it down. There you go. Okay. One bow. Okay. That's like. Those are like two narrow one. They look too small. Yeah, no, it's too small. So that means this camera is firing too fast. Yeah.

So we have a camera set to 1000th of a second, but it's firing less than that. Can we check it on the electronic machine? Yeah, just verify that what we in fact see. We'll see how the they did in the 20s and 30s. Okay. Okay. So this is like 1000 speed. Everything is. That's fast.

That should be one millisecond, but it's 0.6 milliseconds. The 500 is kind of. Okay. 250. A little slow. A little slow, but still kinds of okay to use. That's so good. So we took a. We took a completely analog gut feel method. Yeah. Yeah. And we. And we were able to get a kind of a discrete reading. Yeah. And it was accurate.

So we know that that camera is firing faster than a thousandth of a second. Yeah. And we knew that before. We measured below a millisecond in 19. What? 20. 19, 30. Yeah. At least the technology is from there. But of course, this unit can be a little bit younger than that. But the idea is that old.

There is no sponsor on this video. This video is provided by the patrons of Smartereveryday. Patreon.com Smartereveryday also, I do want to mention camera store though. Again, no sponsorship here. I just like these folks and think you would like what they do. They take in old cameras that may be damaged or something like that. They fix them up, get them working to pristine condition.

Their technicians are trained in all the different models of cameras. So it's cute that Juho has a company having to do with cameras. But Yuka's been certified since Juho was born. I like shooting with my old Canon A1 and it was really fun to see how they fix these things. So if you want to check it out go to camerastore.com that's camera with a K. Camerastore.com smarter I've asked Juho if he will give you free shipping. He offered to do some kind of affiliate share.

I don't want to do that. I just like them and I think they're cool people and I love what they're doing. So if you want free shipping on your camera, you can do that by going to camerastore.com smarter pick out a camera that they have on their website, order it, they'll send it to your house and they will ship it for free. So yeah, that's it.

Thank you so much for watching this video. I'm grateful to everyone who supports smarter every day on patreon. Last video you bought me missile parts. This video you helped me go to Finland and film this. So I'm grateful. That's it. I'm destin you get smarter every day. Have a good one. Bye.

Technology, Innovation, Science, Camera Mechanics, Mechanical Engineering, Photography, Smartereveryday