Okay, this holiday actually occurred almost a week ago on May 25^th, but I’m bringing it up now intentionally, and you’ll understand why in a moment – give or take.

Today (not today) is the birthday of Dumfroot Spaglokkit, known far and wide to photographers as the inventor of the shutter lag. Here’s his story:

In the early days of the field when photographers had to create their own film plates out of dried shellac and chickenshit, and portraiture was rearing its ugly head, Spaglokkit noticed that despite preparing his subjects for the inevitable clicking of the shutter, usually they weren’t actually ready – at least half of the time, the fear of what might occur caused them to blink (these were the days of flash powder, after all,) but there was also the factor that anyone trying to smile pleasantly invariably looks like they’ve discovered a snail in their undergarments. He did observe, however, that once they felt the ordeal was over, their look of relief, while not the targeted warm expression, was at least better than appearing to be holding back flatulence. Spaglokkit reasoned that, if the shutter actually tripped well after it was triggered, the number of keepers would probably double and much expensive chickenshit could be salvaged.

Dumfroot began with squeeze bulbs that tripped the shutter through air pressure, ensuring that flexible long hoses and compression delay introduced an uncertain and unpredictable pause before the shutter actually opened. He also experimented with wound springs, which were quickly adapted to the group portrait task where the photographer wanted to be in the frame. These worked a little too well, in that the variability was quite wide, producing either a shot of the photographers’ backs as they were running to get into position, or the strained confusion on everyone’s face as the timer ground to a near-halt well beyond when it was supposed to before actually triggering the shutter. Nonetheless, these remained in use for decades before being repurposed to calculate the time that a caller would spend on hold before a customer service rep would actually answer.

As films improved and photographers got bored with portraiture, the shutter lag was gradually phased out in favor of split-second timing to capture that precise moment after something cool happened, driving it home that it was all the photographer’s fault and could not be blamed on shutter lag; this is widely believed to be a German innovation. Electronic shutters and circuitry served to almost drive Spaglokkit’s efforts into obscurity – until the advent of digital photography.

This ‘advancement’ brought instant gratification into the hands of amateurs, but it also brought complications. Camera manufacturers realized that instantly producing a snapshot worth keeping, first try, meant their products might last far too long, and so they brought back shutter lag, as well as autofocus wandering and the deceptive pre-flash to fool people, ensuring that a) users would take many more photos trying to get the one that they wanted, wearing down the equipment faster, and b) the promise of ‘improvements’ with a new model a mere six months down the road would improve sales by several hundred percent. The shutter lag was carefully calculated to reduce by fractions with every new model, despite the fact that solid-state circuitry had no discernible delay like mechanical shutters and apertures did. There was a third factor as well, in that a certain number of users, frustrated at the missed shots through the shutter lag, would smash their camera and go purchase a ‘better’ one.

[There was a variable-delay software that was initially used in digital cameras before the ‘calculated reduction’ technique was settled upon; this software was later sold to Microsoft to run their “time remaining” displays for larger tasks, which bear no relation whatsoever to the actual passage of time. This is to produce an unbalanced and insecure state of mind in the user, which can cause them to buy more Microsoft products. Apple, it must be noted, went in the other direction, pricing their products exorbitantly to convince the less-discerning population that they must be more valuable, knowing how few people would actually perform a simple comparison…]

Nonetheless, this gradual reduction in lag time could only last so long, and manufacturers were quickly running out of new models to introduce (though the marketing ploys of both “X zooms” and “megapixels” helped stretch this out a bit.) Spaglokkit’s innovation was once again teetering on the verge of obsolescence when so-called ‘smartphone’ cameras burst on the scene.

The premise behind smartphones is, the more time they spent out of someone’s pocket, the more information they can scarf from their environment and send back to the manufacturer; thus, every task is created to take far longer than necessary, assisted by the introduction of a balky touch-screen interface. Once again, the shutter lag came into play, necessitating at least three photos be taken in order to obtain one keeper, leaving plenty of transmission time for data. Quite often, the phones are transmitting the audio as well, because the frustrated mutterings and curses of the users are hilarious – remember this the next time you take your phone into the bathroom. And the phone manufacturers took a cue from the camera makers, ensuring that their products were more delicate than necessary so that the frustration damage factor keeps replacement models on the market.

Dumfroot Spaglokkit unfortunately died quite young while pursuing his other hobby of skydiving; his idea to adapt his invention to that field wasn’t the brightest that he’d had. So he never comprehended the impact that shutter lag would have on the field of photography, and especially, never received any repayment from photographers themselves, which is probably for the best.