It's one of those small things that's really easy to take for granted. You press the button, there's a clicking sound, and voila, you have yourself a photograph. But the amount of technology and engineering that goes into creating that photograph is pretty incredible. Need proof? Gavin over at The Slow Mo Guys (one of the most wildly entertaining and informative YouTube channels in existence) used a Phantom Flex to capture the mechanical shutter of the Canon 7D at a whopping 10,000fps. Needless to say, this should give you an entirely new perspective on what's going on inside of your camera:


Not only is this a fantastic explanation of how a mechanical shutter works at a variety of different shutter speeds, but it's also a great reminder of why we need to be wary of rolling shutters in the context of filmmaking. While digital cinema cameras with global shutters are becoming more common and affordable (hooray!), almost all video-capable DSLRs and mirrorless cameras still utilize a rolling shutter. For that reason, most of us still have to make sure to avoid things like whip pans and highly-kinetic camera movements because, as Gavin explains in the video, each frame of video actually contains multiple points in time due to the way the image is captured by the sensor (from top to bottom).

If you're interested in more awesome high-speed videos like this one, definitely head on over to The Slow Mo Guys YouTube channel.

Source: The Slow Mo Guys