Hey guys. I hope you're doing well. This is Janine from Pangolin Photo Safaris and with all these
exciting news out there with all the updated new cameras, especially the mirrorless cameras
out there, I've had a few questions that I would like to get to the bottom of.
What is a mechanical shutter versus an electronic shutter?
Is one better than the other one?
It is quite a technical subject I'll try and break it down as easily as possible for you so let's dive right into it.
Before we get into the pros and the cons of a mechanical versus an electronic shutter
I would like to introduce you to the mechanisms behind it so that you can follow me better.
A mechanical shutter in a dslr camera is simply a curtain that opens and closes
in front of the sensor in order to let light in onto the sensor expose the sensor and
close it off again. However, it doesn't go open as we would expect from a curtain
it actually goes up and down vertically to expose the sensor. I was actually able
to capture the shutter of the 5d mark iii for you with 960 frames per second on my Samsung phone
and even that wasn't fast enough in order to make sure that you can properly see what is happening
behind the lens. So let's just take a few frames from the video and have a look what goes on there.
Number 1 with a DSLR camera the mirror needs to slide out of the way first. So that the light
can penetrate all the way through to the sensor. Then the front curtain opens in this case by
falling down allowing light to enter. Thirdly followed closely by the so-called rear curtain,
depending on how fast your shutter is, it follows faster or later. As you can see in the video here
the shorter the exposure time the smaller the gap between the front and the rear curtain becomes.
At 1/250th of a second, you will notice that the entire sensor is visible at some stage
before the rear curtain follows again. That is also the reason why 250th of the second
is usually the fastest that you can sync a flash to your camera too.
Because as a flash goes off it is required that the entire sensor is visible at that stage
so that it doesn't throw any shadows on your image. In mirrorless cameras however
we have the disadvantage that we don't have a mirror to show us what's going on there
therefore we need the sensor permanently open to send electronic signals to our viewfinder
so we see a live view from what's going on in front of our lens. Because a sensor is originally
open for the live view we first have to close the shutter in preparation for an exposure when
we use mechanical shutters on mirrorless cameras. Then only can the curtain open and close again.
Not just does it take extra time but it also creates extra movement and extra noise within the camera.
Therefore newer mirrorless cameras and even some dslr cameras have adopted a new technology called
electronic front curtain shutter. All that is really happening at that moment is that
we don't need a front curtain to trigger the exposure. Instead, we have an electronic trigger
that activates our pixels that are then terminated again by the rear shutter closing over the sensor.
last but not least with mirrorless or any digital cameras that do not have a mirror
We also have the option for a completely electronic shutter. What happens is
that the curtain becomes entirely obsolete. There is no physical barrier closing off the sensor
in order to let light through and block it off again. Instead we have all the pixels activated
electronically but instead of activating them all at once it reads it line by line.
Processors are getting faster and faster nowadays but the entire process of reading each line individually
can take up to 1/15 of a second and is therefore still fairly slow
so let's get into the pros and the cons of a mechanical shutter versus an electronic shutter but before I do if this video
is helpful to you please don't forget to press the like button and just press subscribe to make sure
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So with the technology advancing each and every day I have guests asked me is a mechanical shutter
really still relevant in nowadays time? Do you need it in a mirrorless camera at all?
first and foremost i want to make sure that we all understand that in a mirrorless camera
the mechanical shutter is not lacking because we took the mirror out.
The mirror flopping up and the opening up of
the front shutter is two different mechanisms. Two different things all at once. So just because
the mirror is gone now we still need to open our curtain somehow in order to expose our sensor.
Secondly, I assume you are here because you love wildlife photography in particular.
In wildlife and sports photography especially push our cameras to their absolute limits.
We need incredibly high shutter speeds to capture the movement and we often push
our ISOs much further than in other fields of photography because we work with natural light.
Flash is often not an option and we can't choose where the animals are lying very often.
Therefore I want to discuss whether an electronic shutter is up for the challenge of wildlife photography.
All right let's first discuss what is great about the new electronic shutters. Most of the advantages
actually have to do with the fact that there is simply no moving parts involved anymore.
Number 1 you have a lot more stability. Your cameras are not gonna be affected by any moving
parts slamming down 1/2000s for instance and therefore
you avoid a little bit of vibration which is known as shutter shock. It's actually a thing!
However shutter shock really only affects you when you shoot on fairly slow shutter speeds
somewhere between a 1/5s and 1/60s, that's when that vibration affects your
image and can cause slight blurriness. Given that in wildlife photography
I always suggest that we shoot minimum our focal length. If we can actually double our focal length
and we often shoot with telephoto lenses in wildlife we rarely shoot as slow as a 1/60s.
Therefore shutter shock is really not an option even though we shoot with telephoto lenses.
Secondly and most obvious of course is that an electronic shutter is silent and silence
is absolutely beautiful in wildlife photography. We don't disturb the animals so much because we
don't have the curtain going "clack clack". Actually twice because we have the front and the rear shutter coming.
It often sounds like one sound because it happens so fast but it does make noise so that
would be an advantage for wildlife. Thirdly we have less moving parts that can break. Anything that
moves and gets used over and over again has wear and tear and shutters have an average lifespan,
depending on your camera body, they can be between 150 000 all the way to the pro bodies that is more
in the 3 to 400,000 region. But then the camera manufacturer doesn't guarantee any more
that the shutter can actually hold up all that use. Given that in wildlife photography we often
shoot on high continuous bursts we really make use of our camera. Then it depends how often do
you personally use it. But eventually, you do run the risk of breaking your shutter. It breaks off.
It breaks in half. The little arms on the side the leverage mechanisms get stuck and you would have
to replace it or figure if it's still worthwhile to actually replace it versus buying a new camera
It also becomes a little bit more difficult to judge the age of a camera or, let's say the
other way around, your camera doesn't age because of a shutter being able to break.
If you actually want to know how you figure out your shutter count of the camera
check out the link up here it will give you a nice explanation in that regard.
Last but not least you can actually reach much faster shutter speeds with an electronic shutter.
Even though the whole process is quite sluggish you can reach up to 1/32 000 of a second with some
of the mirrorless cameras. Can you imagine? Most DSLR cameras are limited to about 1/8000s
of a shutter because you physically have to move a curtain and that has its limits.
Do we really need to shoot that fast? In wildlife photography we are limited by the
light conditions and rarely can i afford to even shoot on 1/1000s without blowing
the roof of my ISO. So we are limited with how fast we can shoot maybe for hummingbirds it might be
nice to be able to shoot faster but I don't see the huge urgency in that for wildlife photography.
So you see there is quite nice advantages in having an electronic shutter in mirrorless
cameras but let's have a look what might not work so well with an electronic shutter.
Most electronic shutters that are built into our modern electronic cameras and mirrorless cameras
are called a "rolling shutter" because they read the pixels line by line on the sensor and this process
has some disadvantages as it takes, as I said, about average 1/15s. Some processers are faster.
The last line is read much later and exposed much later than the first line. If you now have a very
fast-moving subject like the drone blades for instance. I know this is now not wildlife-related
but it was something i could get a hold of easily and photograph and recreate for you guys.
You can see here in the mechanical shutter on 1/8000s
we have nice rotor blades visible and here in the rolling shutter we get really really weird shapes.
Because our last line is exposed in a completely different time than our first line.
So every time we photograph fast-moving subjects and that is our goal in wildlife
photography really. Chases, hunts, birds in flight, fishing. All these sort of things .
We run the risk of distorting our animal especially if it is something moving horizontal.
That is quite a huge risk to run you might sit at your once in a lifetime sighting. You cannot
recreate wildlife sightings. It is pure luck and you do not want your animal to be distorted.
Secondly, not as important though, you have a similar problem shooting an artificial light.
Once again it's caused by the shutter not exposing everything at once
and if you shoot artificial light, artificial light sometimes pulses. There's these tungsten lights for
instance or in sports arenas we don't notice it because our brain is actually quite clever and
compensates for it but the camera will pick up on it. So when the sensors read line by line the light
conditions are not the same for each line as a light is pulsing and then it creates something
called banding such as here. It looks like the exposure isn't even causing these funny stripes
all the way across your picture. Not too relevant for wildlife photography
but something you need to keep an eye out if you shoot sports in the late evenings or even indoors.
So while the electronic shutter certainly has a lot of lovely advantages it is simply too risky to
have a distorted animal in a really nice interactive wildlife scene no photographer
would take that risk not if they shoot regularly and not if they are on the one trip throughout
the year that they saved up for. So for wildlife photography that can be a little bit of an issue.
So why do camera manufacturers not simply create a shutter that can expose the entire sensor at once.
Such a shutter actually exists. It's called a global shutter
and without going into too much technical details because i would need a whole new tutorial for that.
A global shutter requires an enormous amount of memory, pixel memory, in order to be able to
expose and read the entire sensor and every single pixel at once.
So, as a result, you are going to create a a sensor that is much more noise sensitive.
So causing grain at lower ISOs much quicker and also a sensor that has a lesser dynamic range for wildlife
photography both crucial things and with the current technological advancements i don't think
any photographer would be willing to take such a trade-off simply to avoid a rolling shutter
because we can avoid it with a mechanical shutter as well and not have the loss of sensor quality.
Instead, it's amazing because research keeps on outdoing itself by producing ever faster processers
to be able to handle our need for focusing speed, number 1, our need for fast viewfinders, our need
for fast shutters - especially electronic shutters. So the new Canon 1dx mark iii for instance
has the Digi X processor which is a phenomenal processor being able to read the sensor, line by
line it is a rolling shutter, but so fast that it becomes much less of a problem.
So experts think that in the future with our technological advancements the rolling shutter
will become less and less of an issue. So what about the use of that so-called electronic front
curtain shutter that i briefly mentioned earlier? Most mirrorless cameras have it. Even DSLR cameras
have it when you switch them onto live view and it's usually automatically turned on. Are there
pros and cons? So you don't get any distortion like you do from a rolling shutter. However the
electronic front curtain shutter is known to make your background more crisp more detailed and in
wildlife photography photographers pay huge bucks to get the wide aperture lenses that create those
beautiful smooth bokehs. So why ruin a bokeh if you have a mechanical shutter. There's also
some issues reported on really high shutter speeds - which we tend to achieve with wildlife photography.
But overall if need be you can turn the electronic front shutter off. Would turning it off have a
disadvantage? Well there is a slight delay because you first have to actually close your sensor on
a mirrorless camera before you can reopen it as previously explained. That creates extra movement.
Shouldn't be a problem in wildlife photography because you shoot on high shutter speeds
and it creates extra noise. Well, you would have two clacks instead of just one clack. I don't think
it makes a huge difference. Either you make noise or you don't make noise.
My 1dx mark ii is incredibly loud and I work with it because it produces phenomenal results.
So again in wildlife photography, I would probably tend to turn that electronic front shutter off
as well just to be secure.
In conclusion right now today with the cameras that are out on the market
i would suggest using a very old-fashioned mechanical shutter for wildlife photography.
to make sure you capture the movement without distortion and to make sure you get the best
bokeh that's out there. I really hope you guys enjoyed this video and it clarified some of these
really technical details to you. I hope that I'll be able to welcome you soon in Botswana
to put all our lessons to the test in the field that's where it's the most fun. Bye.