Appreciation post: finally learned to test shutter speeds with my ears instead of a light meter

For like 6 years I was dragging out my shutter speed tester for every CLA and it took forever. Then an old timer named Gary at a shop in Portland showed me how to listen to the curtain travel and check for hesitation. I was nervous to trust my ears at first but after a few dozen tries on a beat up Pentax Spotmatic it clicked. Now I only grab the tester for finicky focal plane shutters above 1/500. Does anyone else rely on audio cues for speeding up their bench work?

3 comments

3 Comments

evan2951mo ago

Did you ever mistake a squirrel for a bad shutter speed too?

the_olivia20h ago

Glad I'm not the only one whose ears can't be trusted. Had a similar issue with a slow speed on a windy day and blamed the shutter until I saw the blur was just that branch moving. Sometimes you just gotta accept the camera's smarter than you.

paul_owens251mo ago

Oh man, I tried the ear method once and my timing was so bad I swore my camera had developed a limp. Turned out I was just mistaking the sound of my own stomach grumbling for a sticky curtain. I still use a tester for anything faster than 1/250 because my ears apparently have a blind spot for high speeds.