Why won't the shutter of my Lumia 1020 close?

[Windows Central Question]

The shutter of my Lumia 1020 won't close

I am currently using L1020 with w10 tp 10080 update. I used the tp version for 1 week and it works so good. It just that happened that when I hard reset my phone today(May 28, 2015), and launched the default camera, it freezed, so I tried the soft reset. After that, I launched the default camera again then it says "something went wrong" then I noticed that the shutter of my camera won't close and the camera part became hotter and hotter.
So I tried to make a soft reset again but it don't work :'(
Trying the hard reset won't help also.
the shutter is still open.
and my phone stocked in ... "installing some apps, it will take another minute or two.".

please help me! what will I do?

 

[CapoFantasma97]

Re: The shutter of my Lumia 1020 won't close

Try to use Lumiq Software Recovery Tool

 

[gpobernardo]

Re: The shutter of my Lumia 1020 won't close

This happened to my L1020 at least twice back when it was in Cyan - a simple restart followed by opening any camera app fixed the problem. But since you've tried W10TP, you may need to rollback to the latest stable OS version for the L1020 using the Windows Phone Recovery tool as suggested by CapoFanstasma97. There is no guarantee, however, that that will work since the TP has been known to cause some unwanted hardware-level malfunctioning. Nonetheless, that would still be your best hope.

Additional:
First, that is not the camera shutter; rather, that is the secondary lens cover (the main cover being the glass). A mechanical shutter, if present, is always placed behind the lens assembly and in front of the camera sensor (or film platform for other cameras). Second, the L1020 does not have a mechanical shutter.

 

[Summer_Moon]

gpobernardo - I don't know what you are talking about... the L1020 most definitely does have a mechanical shutter. It's one of the perks of having the L1020... so yes the shutter could be stuck open on the L1020

 

[Summer_Moon]

Re: The shutter of my Lumia 1020 won't close



Here's even the white paper directly from Nokia. I think they know exactly how they built the phone....

 

[gpobernardo]

Hmm, this is useful information. I stand corrected on the mechanical shutter part, though I'm reading more about it now - learning something new.

But nonetheless, the mechanical shutter is not visible from the outside of the phone because the mechanical shutter is behind the lens assembly - unless you can see through the lens assembly itself and look down onto the sensor. What the OP is most probably referring to is the mechanical lens cover - it's the thing that covers the lens and then opens only when a camera is active whereas it closes again after a shot is taken during the image review (just to be sure you know what I'm talking about).

In taking photographs of moving objects at high shutter speeds, the objects appear slanted whereas the image gets captured from the top to bottom. This does look like the behavior of a mechanical shutter though some digital sensors also sample an image from top to bottom as opposed to simultaneously sampling the entire sensor die to insufficient power. However, the behavior of the mechanical structure in front of the lens doesn't look like it's causing the slanted distortion since for that to happen a small horizontal slit must be moved across the image sensor instead of just covering the lens which is what that mechanical structure is doing, leading me to deduce that the mechanical structure in front of the lens is not the mechanical shutter but rather a mechanical lens cover.

Then again, as soon as I have access to a slow motion camera, I could take a slow motion video of that mechanical structure and if it does behave like it is the mechanical shutter, then I stand corrected. It would be strange, though, to have the shutter in front of the lens.

 

[gpobernardo]

Re: The shutter of my Lumia 1020 won't close

View attachment 106157

Here's even the white paper directly from Nokia. I think they know exactly how they built the phone....

Can you provide the link to this "white paper"? I have found two sites where the whitepaper.pdf should be downloadable but the sites no longer loads the whitepaper.pdf - possibly been taken down?

I am in contact with Microsoft about this - they responded to me by saying that the Lumia 1020 does not support mechanical shutter but when I mentioned the reviews of the many websites and showed them this image, they would like to see where it was posted. Looking forward to your response.

As of now, I'm thinking that there has been some ambiguity on the term "mechanical shutter". As photographers, we know what a mechanical shutter is in a camera, but a "mechanical shutter" could also mean anything that shuts off anything (i.e. a mechanical lens cover). Will update with further communication with Microsoft.

Update:
Found the link to the white paper. The words "mechanical shutter" indeed can be found in page 21 (the one you attached as an image) and in page 22. However, an objective examination of what is illustrated in page 22 suggests that the mechanical shutter is not a real shutter but rather a lens cover that "shuts" off light so it can't enter the lens assembly. Notice how that "shutter" opens - it forms a V-shape as it opens - this is not in agreement with the slanted (linear, not radial) distortion found in fast horizontally-moving objects.

However again, there's a possibility that the illustration is "just" an illustration and doesn't really depict what that mechanical shutter really looks like when it's opened. Have communicated this to Microsoft - waiting for their response.

Update 2: Microsoft has responded, apologizes for confusion. They now state that the mechanical shutter is supported in the Lumia 1020, but they refuse to comment on the link to the white paper. Now my query on whether or not that "mechanical shutter" is a real shutter (and not just a lens cover) has been forwarded to the "relevant department". Waiting for their response.

 

[Summer_Moon]

Re: The shutter of my Lumia 1020 won't close

Well looks like you found the link, sorry I didn't see your response until this morning. I would personally contact Nokia instead of Microsoft as they are the ones who built it. But I would be willing to bet that it is a mechanical shutter. If you take the 1020 and watch the shutter as you take pictures you can see it open and close. You can even adjust the time of the shutter and the shutter will stay open for the designated amount of time. It looks to me everything like a mechanical shutter. Even if it is in front of the lens (which it's really not considering it has a multi-lens assembly and it's definitely behind them) it's doing everything a mechanical shutter should. It's most definitely at least not an electronic shutter i.e. it literally is blocking off the light by shutting rather than the electronic version most cell phone cameras use of shutting off the sensor.

 

[gpobernardo]

Re: The shutter of my Lumia 1020 won't close

No problem. I'm genuinely interested to get the raw facts about this.

Are we referring to the same thing? If you go to page 22 in the link I attached (the 22-page white paper), there's a partially-opened mechanical gate forming a triangle-shaped hole in front of the lens (but behind the glass cover which isn't a lens). If that's what you're referring to, then that is most certainly in front of the lens assembly - because if it's closed the lens assembly can't be seen at all. Nonetheless, I've done some readings and though some types of shutters are placed in front of the lens, the slanted distortion found in images taken with the L1020 of horizontally moving objects suggests a focal-plane or two-curtain type of shutter, one which is found behind the lens assembly.

I'm starting to agree with you, actually, but there's just one piece of information I can't settle. Luckily, a team who refer to themselves as the SlowMoGuys uploaded a video on how a mechanical shutter behaves at 10,000fps slow motion (video at the bottom of this post). They provide a simple but straightforward explanation and video documentation on how mechanical shutters work and the side effects that behavior has, i.e. the slanting of moving objects both in photos and videos.

Briefly, my dilemma is this: the mechanical shutter that we're seeing (the one on top of the lens assembly and behind the glass cover) just seems to open and close, i.e. it doesn't seem to have that horizontal slit movement from top to bottom (as seen in the video below). What the shutter appears to do is to close moving from the top to the bottom, blocking the top part of the lens first before the bottom part. If this was so, then the images of moving objects won't appear simply slanted but rather blurrier at the bottom compared to the top, since the bottom part was left open longer relative to the top.

I've requested them to make a slow motion video of the L1020's "shutter" to shed definitive light on our curiosity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmjeCchGRQo

Here's another video but this time of a Mirrorless camera. Since most mirrorless non-smartphone cameras (with possibly the exception of the L1020) have mechanical shutters, it's interesting to see how the shutter of such type of camera works. Just like other mechanical leaf shutters, this one has two sets of leaves - the bottom and the top. The difference between mirrorless and DSLRs is that here the bottom leaves are left open for live viewing of the image sensor. Once the shutter is pressed, the bottom leaves move up (covering the sensor) and then moves down followed by the top set of leaves whereas the spacing in between these two sets of leaves determine the exposure time. It is that top-to-bottom movement of the gap that causes the slanting in horizontally moving objects. Then, the top set is retracted, leaving the sensor open again.

Hence, one should see two different sets of leaves when the shutter is just closed (e.g. in standby mode) and right after the photo is taken. This can be seen in the video (below) clearly just by looking at the difference in the levers attached to the leaves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zV0iMoT-3F8

In the case of the Lumia 1020, referring to the mechanical thing in front of the lens, we see the same set of "leaves" both when the camera is "off" and right after a photo is taken. This suggests there was no horizontal gap as mentioned earlier in a normal mechanical shutter. This brings me back to the dilemma, whereas the slanting in image should have been caused by a moving horizontal gap... either that or the sensor was partially being imaged from the top to bottom without a real mechanical shutter.

Note, however, that we're open to the possibility that the L1020 has both a mechanical lens cover (the one we're seeing) and a mechanical shutter behind the lens (one we're not seeing).

By the way, mechanical leaf shutters can only usually go up to 1/4000s, 1/8000s in some models (as in the first video). The L1020 can go up to 1/16000s, which suggests that it has an electronic shutter instead. What does that mean since the white paper indicates it has a mechanical shutter? Couple that with Microsoft's first response to my query (they asked me what I meant by a mechanical shutter which was surprising since don't we all mean the same thing when we say "mechanical shutter" - apparently not), it seems like some marketing plot has been brewed somewhere, by saying that the mechanical lens cover is a mechanical shutter since it does "shut off" the light when the camera is not in use anyway, although it's not a real mechanical shutter. Again, only a definitive slow motion video or a complete dismantling of the L1020 camera unit would prove or disprove this.


Apologies to the OP. I hope the answer posted in #2 and #3 would help resolve the issue. Nonetheless, I also hope that the discussion now going on about mechanical shutters would make the L1020 more interesting and appealing.:wink:

 

[Summer_Moon]

Re: The shutter of my Lumia 1020 won't close

To the OP, sorry to have derailed your initial question. I would think letting the battery die might help to get it to close.
For the mechanical shutter of the 1020, I found some pictures that might be of use. They are cut-away images of the 1020 sensor.



Looking closer I see what you mean and yes the leaves are in front of the lenses, but I still see it as being a mechanical shutter. There would be no reason to have it other than for a mechanical shutter. If you look on the iPhone you can see directly down into the assembly there is no shutter, so it therefore has an electronic shutter.

 

[gpobernardo]

Yup, I saw the cut-away diagram, too... but that's a good find on the actual dissection of the camera module!

Now, it seems that the question is: are those sets of leaves components of a real mechanical shutter or not? - that is if they are a "set of leaves" to begin with, could be just a simple sliding cover without the fine print.

If those sets of leaves behave exactly like how the leaves in the second video in post #9 do, then those indeed are a mechanical shutter as known to photographers. But if they don't, then the "mechanical shutter" being referred to in the white paper is simply a mechanical lens cover designed to prevent, or shut off, light from entering the camera module when not in use, perhaps to protect the electronics/sensor from wear since sensors degrade over time with exposure to light,... or to mislead the vast majority of consumers in a marketing plot into believing that it is a real mechanical shutter when it is just a simple automatic lens cover?

Anyone who could create a really-slow motion video of the L1020 "shutter" for us? The slow motion capture of the iPhone 5s isn't enough.

Nonetheless, whether it is or it isn't a mechanical shutter, the facts about how the L1020 photos are remain unchanged, and that that "shutter", when stuck, should be capable of being closed by at least one of the methods posted (way) above.