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Originally Posted by CraigD
One part strikes me as wrong:
While I’ve not done a lot of disassembly of digital cameras, I’ve taken apart a few of the cheapest, and am certain they have no mechanical shutter. I’ve also listened carefully to my wife’s DMC-FZ series camera, a “bridge” model resembling a DSLR but with a non-removable lens, and with it’s shutter click speaker sound switched off, can hear no mechanical sound, so am failry sure it has no mechanical shutter, either. |
Your claim was interesting, so I decided to look it up. Every source I found claims that digital cameras do have shutters. Instead of their analog counterparts that rely on a mechanical shutter, digital cameras utilize an electronic shutter.
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All cameras, be they film or digital, have a shutter. In film cameras and digital SLRs this is simply a mechanical barrier that prevents light from falling on the film or sensor until it is needed. Digital compact cameras usually have an electronic "shutter". When a picture is taken, the shutter is opened for a precisely measured amount of time allowing light to pass through. The duration of the exposure is set by the camera's light meter, and depends on the amount of available light and the aperture setting.
Most digital cameras will have a range of available settings from a few seconds to a few thousandths of a second. Some can go as high as 1/4000th of a second, some can time a shutter release as long as 30 seconds and many also have a feature called a ‘B' setting, in which the shutter stays open for as long as you hold the shutter release down. (The ‘B' is from bulb; very old cameras commonly used an air-bulb attachment as a remote shutter release.) It's worth noting however that some older digital cameras suffer from increased image noise on very long exposures. If your camera has adjustable noise reduction, set it to maximum for long exposure shots.
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Digital Camera Tutorial: Shutter speed - TrustedReviews - TrustedReviews
Could it be, Craig, that you did not find or identify the shutter mechanism in the dig cams you disassembled? Or perhaps this is a myth of epic proportions?
Honestly, I've never considered the fact that a dig cam might not have a shutter. But now that I'm thinking about it, wouldn't this be easy enough to control on the CCD? Perhaps this is what they mean by electronic "shutter"?
