Talking to an old timer repairer made me rethink my whole approach to shutter calibration

Had a conversation with a guy named Jerry at the camera show last weekend. He's been fixing cameras since the 1970s and he told me I was way overthinking my shutter speed tests. He said I was chasing numbers that don't matter in real world use. Jerry showed me his method which is just shooting test rolls and looking at the negatives by eye. He said if the exposure looks right on film then the shutter is good enough, even if the tester says it's off by 10 percent. It hit different because I've been wasting hours trying to get every single speed dead perfect on my tester. Now I'm wondering how many other repairers out there are using the old school visual method instead of obsessing over the numbers. Has anyone else switched from being a perfectionist with the tester to just trusting test rolls?

2 comments

2 Comments

juliawalker1mo agoMost Upvoted

Damn if Jerry's method works for him that's great, but a 10% error at 1/1000 could be over a full stop off on the high end and you'd never catch it just eyeballing negatives. Good luck nailing consistent exposures for slide film when your 1/2000 is actually running at 1/1200 just because it looked "close enough" on a test roll.

nina_sullivan611mo agoMost Upvoted

Honestly I used to be all "whatever works" about this stuff but you're totally right. I never thought about how much the error compounds at those fast shutter speeds, especially with slide film where you have basically zero room for screw ups. This actually makes me want to get my camera's shutter properly tested now.