Canon Patent Application: Shutter that minimizes shutter shock

In this patent application Canon is investigation shutters that minimize shutter shock.

If you are not aware, especially on mirrorless cameras there is a phenomenon called shutter shock, which very simplistically is that vibration from the mechanical shutter that can cause blur or a loss of resolution especially at slower shutter speeds starting at 1/100th of a second to around 1/8th of a second and sometimes slower.  This happens more frequently on a mirrorless camera because there are more actions the shutter has to perform because the sensor is normally exposed and open.  The shutter has to first close before exposing the image. These actions are a lot more than what a DSLR does.  This amplifies the vibration effect on mirrorless cameras more than DSLRs did in the past.

Canon looks to combat this with a floating shutter assembly.

They first attempted to do this with a floating shutter;

an image pickup device that holds a shutter in a floating state so as to be movable only in the traveling direction of the shutter blade by using a spring, and absorbs vibration due to the traveling of the shutter blade.

however, they found was not accurate enough.

And in this patent application, they describe a mechanism that uses electromagnets to move the shutter instead which reduces the amount of vibration caused by the assembly. (Thanks for the clarification - I'll blame it on 60 hours' worth of jetlag still).

This is pretty cool and could be useful on cheaper cameras that Canon makes in the future that do not have a global shutter - which of course eliminates this completely.

Japan Patent Application 2022-039332

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