Cloth vs Metal shutter

I have a question about shutters. On the net you read a lot about cloth shutters used in

older camera`s but also in new Leica camera`s. Yet my Contax RTS with a cloth shutter

switched in an upgrade to a horizontal titanium shutter in the RTS II to RTS III with a metal

shutter that travels vertically while the old shutter is revered as being so good (and

fragile). My minolta XE-5 has a Copal-Leitz Shutter made of metal, developed with Copal

and Leitz (Leica) but Leica still uses cloth today in their M camera`s (at least some of

them).

 

Could somebody give me an answer which is better, more durable, more precise or is it a

question of which suits a certain design (rangefinder/SLR) better.

 

I have searched the web and found many different answers that create even more

questions

Michiel

 

In general, the older design of horizontal cloth shutter could not be made to synch with electronic flash above a certain speed usually 1/60th or sometimes even slower. This could be overcome by making the shutter curtains travel vertically, but cloth was not appropriate for vertical travel due to the width of the film frame. Copal developed the metal vertical shutter to overcome this problem. Vertical travel enables flash synch at 1/125 or even 1/250th and sometimes higher. There are cameras with cloth shutters that have taken hundreds of thousands of shots and are still going, as there are cameras with metal shutters that are equally as reliable. Nowdays we have high-speed synch flash units so the problem is not a major issue.

I don't know if you've ever played with infrared film but a cloth shutter can also pass

infrared.

Yes.

 

You don't buy an <expletive> shutter and build a camera around it, you buy a camera that may be part of a system. Everything on the market works well enough. Now go back to sleep.

 

Its wonderful that you have nothing more important to worry about.

I don't know which is better, but I do know that cloth shutters are easy to replace when they wear out.That may be something to consider when buying older equipment.

There is a tradeoff between durability and performance. For many years, despite incursions by Hasselblad and Contax, cloth shutters prevailed. More recently, high-performance, bladed shutters has taken the lead.

 

Cloth shutters are light, durable and relatively resistant to accidental damage. The structural material, silk, is extremely strong and resistant to fatigue. The downside is that the performance is limited due to the mass which must be moved at once, so that the maximum electronic flash speed (when the shutter is completely open) is on the order of 1/60 second. A legendary hazard is that the sun could burn a hole through the shutter if the camera were pointed carelessly for more than a few moments (like left on a table). In 1959, the Nikon F replaced cloth with titanium foil which eliminated the burn-hole hazard, but did not significantly add to performance.

 

Early versions of metal focal plane shutters were not very successful. The Hasselblad 1600 shutter was a corrugated metal shutter which was bent or dented in short order - a disaster by most accounts. The Contax rangefinder had brass slats sewn together with silk thread that traveled vertically. Not many Contax shutters have survived to the present. The camera itself was a brick: excellent glass but not particularly easy to carry or use.

 

Copal introduced a vertical, metal-bladed f/p shutter in the early '60s, but only in low-end cameras. My first experience was with a Nikorex F - a camera Nikon wishes never happened. The shutter outlasted the camera, which unfortunately fell apart within 18 months of heavy use. (My epiphany was that build-quality trumps all other features for a working camera!)

 

The breakthrough was in the 90's, illustrated by the introduction of the Nikon F5 with a composite-bladed shutter. For the first time, you could use an electronic flash at 1/250 second and have an absurdly high 1/8000 shutter speed. The shutter, while strong, is thinner than a human hair and as fragile as an egg shell. With so many stress points in thin metal and composites, the life of the shutter is a concern, and reasonably predictable (using stress-fracture analysis, developed in the 70's). With a predicted life exceeding 150,000 shots, it's hardly a concern to lose sleep over - fix it or replace it.

 

Parallel to (and perhaps driving) the move to high-performance, focal-plane shutters is the development of the electronic flash (and better, faster film). In the 60's, electronic flash was a virtual novelty: mostly low-powered, battery-eating and unreliable. I could light up a football field with a thumb-sized flash bulb, or an 8-pound Stroboflash with a $40 battery (10 cents a pop). I missed out on the transition (raising a family and building a career), but somehow flash bulbs disappeared. (A peanut-sized AG-1 bulb puts out 12,000 lumen-seconds, about the same as a 400 joule electronic flash.)

 

Horizontal shutters are the best fit for compact, high-end cameras, best represented by the Leica M cameras. My Nikon F3HP is a jewel of a camera, hardly larger in the hand than the Leica, also with a horizontal (titanium) shutter. SLR's, in general, have ample room for a vertical, bladed shutter around the mirror box, with little impact on the size of the camera. SLRs are pretty big these days!

I know a metal shutter can't burn through but I wonder if the heat can warp the fragile blades or dry out any nearby shutter lubricant. It might be best not to take risks with any focal plane shutter, fabric or metal.

There were several successful metal focal plane shutters around in the 'fifties and 'sixties. Canon used them in some of their range finder models (particularly the 'P' and the '7') and Nikon used a Titanium shutter for the 'F', introduced in 1959 and essentially unchanged until the 'seventies. All these shutters were essentially the same as the cloth versions but with metal curtains.

 

The Nikkormat was one of the earliest cameras to be supplied with the Copal 'Square' shutter which allowed it to sync at the, then unheard of, speed of 1/125. I was told by the Nikon distributor's rep in the 'seventies that Nikon made more profit on the 'Mat than on the 'F' because they kept the price of the Nikkormat high to prevent too much competition with the 'F' - a lot of photographers were really impressed by the high speed flash sync.

Most cameras can survive any environmental conditions as the owner, as long as you are there to hold the camera. A car interior in the Southwest (or Southeast) can exceed 160 deg F in short order, which will damage film, batteries and probably the camera. If you're there holding it, the paramedics will probably have to pry it from your hands. The greatest danger to lubricants is that the oil will migrate to places it doesn't belong, like the aperture or shutter blades, and impede their operation. It's a good idea to CLA camera equipment every 5 years or less, so lubricant "drying" can be avoided.

 

I'm not so sure a composite shutter, or even aluminum won't burn if the camera is focused on the sun long enough.

<i>The Contax rangefinder had brass slats sewn together with silk thread that traveled vertically. Not many Contax shutters have survived to the present. The camera itself was a brick: excellent glass but not particularly easy to carry or use.</i><p>

 

This applies only to the prewar Contax and later Soviet Kievs. The postwar Contax IIa has a shutter with lighter weight aluminum slats. The shutter straps are a synthetic-fiber cord, and I've yet to come across a camera that has a broken cords.<P>

 

The Contax IIa, in fact, is an entirely different camera from the previous models, sharing only the lens mount and general design. These cameras are very pocketable when fitted with a collapsible lens and are quite usable today.

<i>I'm not so sure a composite shutter, or even aluminum won't burn if the camera is

focused on the sun long enough.</i><br><br>

You realize of course, that you can't burn an SLR shutter of any kind unless you leave the

mirror locked up, something I'd think awfully unlikely.<br><br>

Another benefit of a cloth shutter is that it's quiet. On an SLR it's mostly drowned out by

the mirror noise, but on a rangefinder it makes a significant difference.<br><br>

Also, metal shutters tend to be difficult to make 100% light-tight--this is why mirror lock-

up disappeared from most SLRs.

I'll argue against some of the points raised.

 

The Copal square shutters such as those in the Nikkormat are among the most bulletproof ever made. They live on today in cameras like the venerable Nikon FE and FM series. All of them are bulletproof: just keep your greasy little fingers out of them. The FM3A is still made. They are also used in the Cosina-built Nikons and Voigtlander rangefinders.

 

The prewar Contax/Kiev shutter is very reliable, and its design is such that differing curtain speed issues are impossible. Its reputation is undeserved, and for that I'm happy because they aren't that tough to fix. Replacing shutter straps on a Contax is a cake walk next to curtain replacement on a Leica. They both need to be done about as often.

Thank you very much for all your comments. I enjoy collecting camera`s and I love to

know all about then almost as much as I do using them. The cloth vs metal debate helped

me as I always felt that cloth was inferior to metal in durability and timing. But apart from

the "burning a hole in it" , a new flash with slow sync can make a cloth shutter all the more

desireable.

 

Thank`s y`all and I will use a lenscap if it sits in the sun and I don`t use it :)

Don't forget one very important (to some) drawback to cloth shutters: in cold weather, any moisture that might be in the cloth will freeze, causing it to stiffen in very short order. The shutter probably won't freeze solid (it'd have to be actually wet in order for that to happen), but the shutter can certainly lag and become inaccurate. Of course, if you're in Hawaii or Australia, that probably doesn't matter.

"I enjoy collecting camera`s and I love to know all about then almost as much as I do using them."

 

Check out the shutter used in Olympus Pen F/FT. Titanium (foil) disc. You can synch it all the way to 1/500s.

Chris, the shutter cloth is rubberized, to make it opaque and impervious to water. If it's worth anything, the first pictures on the top of Mt. Everest were taken with a Leica, cloth shutter and all.

 

Replacing rubberized cloth with titanium foil makes good sense for strength and durability. However, a simple comparison proved interesting. The titanium shutter in a Nikon F3, mirror up, makes a much louder sound than an ancient Leica M2, and decidedly metallic. In fact, the F3 makes about the same sound with the mirror active as without. An F5, with a composite, vertical shutter, is quieter than an F3, and less metallic, but still much louder than a Leica. Like the F3, the shutter in an F5 contributes most of the audible sound. I wonder if anybody has seen an objective test of this sort.

Very interesting, Edward. I didn't know that about Leica shutters. Still, I've heard of this problem happening with certain medium format cloth shutters...could I be thinking of the Russian cameras?

My Contax 139Q (c 1985) has a vertical metal (alum, I think) shutter, but it syncs at only 125. My Mamiya/Sekor DTL (c 1970) has a fabric horizontal shutter and syncs at 60. They both still keep the light out when they're supposed to. Both are 35mm SLR and I like each camera for different reasons. FWIW, the Contax sounds 'solider,' but the Mamiya has a faster mirror flop.

Edward: The Hillary expedition carried CONTAX II's and III's donated by Time/Life, not Leicas. According to Small, Hillary actually carried a prewar Retina with a Zeiss lens (rare) to the top. Score 1-0 for us Zeiss guys :)

 

Small, Marc James. "Zeiss on Everest". Zeiss Historica Journal 15:2

(Autumn, 1993), pp. 9 - 10.