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Cameras, Formats & Systems

Global Shutter

An electronic shutter that starts and stops the exposure for every photosite at exactly the same instant.

Measured in seconds

In depth

A global shutter eliminates rolling-shutter skew entirely, allows flash sync at any speed, and removes banding under pulsed lighting. It requires extra storage circuitry at every photosite, which historically cost dynamic range and low-light performance — the engineering problem that kept it out of stills cameras until recently.

Examples in practice

A global-shutter camera photographs an aircraft propeller with the blades perfectly straight rather than bent into scimitars.