In the early days of photography, emulsions were not very sensitive to light and lenses had relatively small apertures, so long exposures were needed and cameras were generally mounted on solid, stationary, supports. However, in modern use, cameras are nearly always hand-held – and this introduces shake. Vibrations also are introduced by the complex moving systems within a camera and lens. Although many cameras now incorporate mechanisms for minimizing the detrimental impact of shake, and there is a standard test procedure to measure effectiveness of such measures, there is surprisingly little published on the characterization of camera shake itself. The current work describes how inexpensive shake measurement hardware can be built, proposes a testing methodology for characterizing shake, and summarizes preliminary results obtained by measuring shake under a variety of conditions.
As interchangeable-lens cameras evolve into tightly integrated electromechanical systems, it is becoming increasingly awkward to use optics that cannot electronically communicate with the camera body. Such lenses are commonly referred to as “unchipped” because they lack integrated circuitry (aka, chips) that could interface with the camera body. Despite the awkwardness, there is a large community of photographers who prefer to use manual lenses. Not only is there an increased demand for vintage lenses, but the variety of newly-manufactured fully-manual lenses has been growing dramatically in recent years. Although manual lenses will never provide all the features and performance of lenses created as integrated parts of a camera system, the current work explores a variety of methods by which digital cameras can significantly improve the usability of unchipped manual lenses.