Does the Sony A77 have a shutter?

Question

I bought last month the new Sony A77 and I am so interested to learn about how its translucent mirror technology works but couldn't find enough information on it.

My question is does it has shutter? If it does is that shutter really mechanical and moving 12 times in 1 second?

Asked by shobani

Answer

Yes, the A77 has a mechanical shutter and it does move at 12 FPS per second. There are a number of cameras with similar shutter-speeds including some ultra-zooms but indeed this is very fast.

What it does not have is a motor to move the mirror. This is more problematic for speed then the shutter itself since a mirror is heavy and has to move out of the way completely and back that fast.

Instead it has semi-transparent mirror (transluscent is not the right word technically). The mirror is made of flexible material that reflects about 30% of the light and lets the rest straight through. This makes the imaging sensor have to work a little harder but the autofocus sensor more so.

Answered by Itai

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