Whats a Shutter?
On an ordinary window, a shutter is a simple device that opens or closes to control the amount of light (and/or weather) that enters a room. On a film camera, a shutter is a mechanical device that’s designed to open for a specific amount of time, in order to let in just enough light to properly expose the film. The principle is the same on a camcorder, but the process is electronic rather than mechanical. Today, most camcorders use a small silicon chip–the CCD–to gather light. This chip has one face covered with thousands of tiny light-sensitive spots known as pixels (picture elements). Here’s how a camcorder works: when light strikes the CCD, each pixel gathers it for a fraction of a second. In this same fraction of a second, the light from each pixel gets measured, quantified, and analyzed for color content. Multiply by the number of pixels (270,000 or more in most cases), then repeat the process once for each field of video (60 times per second), and you begin to appreciate the ca
