Until around fifty years ago the camera manufacturing industry was robust and international. American, British, German, French and Japanese companies participated in this major industry.

In similar way to how the French automobile industry does not compete with the American automobile industry today, large sized photo manufacturing concerns often produced products completely independent of any international standards. Some customers, such as national armed forces, Eastman Kodak or Linhof were so important as to demand and have made unique products or variants to their own specifications.

This situation resulted in non-standardization in the area of shutter manufacture. Although now, in a leaner time for manufacturing, there are only a few surviving standards for view camera shutters, this still leaves a large number of useful older model products. There is still a supply of New Old Stock for some of this. And, in the area of large sized shutters some of the old stock is all that is available as a practical matter.

A comprehensive overview of all this is impractical. On these pages is, however, useful information about brands and versions still found in the marketplace . Since most of these are from companies no longer in business, original factory support and information is fast evaporating. Most of this has been developed in response to frequently asked questions and I try to present the most useful overview.

Modern Copal shutters, which we supply new are covered on their own page. Those are the shutters currently supplied by all the lens manufactures for their current products. They are also available from us for special projects, OEM applications etc.