>Incidentally, digital cameras with electronic shutters can do this much cheaper, but for various reasons nice cameras do not generally use electronic shutters.

>Incidentally, digital cameras with electronic shutters can do this much cheaper, but for various reasons nice cameras do not generally use electronic shutters. I admit that I haven't thought about this for a while (I don't actually use flash a lot) but my impression was that most focal-plane shutters are rolling shutters or moving slits of some sort; at high speeds there's no point where the frame is completely open. Whereas leaf shutters have that at all speeds. Most of the leaf-shutter lenses I have are for my old MF and LF film cameras. He's right about them being like watches. One real issue with using older lenses is that there aren't a lot of good repair folks left who know how to service them. I've got a real nice vintage Konica rangefinder with a busted shutter and there's literally one guy who might have the parts. P.S. see above comment for better explanation.