benchodroff.com

What we need is a non-mechanical shutter implemented in an SLR camera. This non-mechincal (aka - digital) shutter could be made by making a very special type of LCD screen. Rather than going from transparent to opaque, it should go from as reflective as a mirror to transparent.
If you replaced the mirror inside an SLR with this special LCD screen, you could “flip” the shutter digitally by simply passing a voltage through it. When the voltage passed through the LCD screen, it would turn transparent and the underlying CMOS sensor would record the image. When the voltage is stopped, the crystals would return to a reflective state and the light would bounce through a series of mirrors to the viewfinder - just as SLR cameras work today. The benefit would be that you could digitally change the state of the LCD rather than wait on a mechanical shutter which can only shoot around 8 frames per second in the most expensive digital cameras.

Of course, the ideal situation would be a shutterless camera. The problem with this design - from ‘rumors’ I have heard are that:

1. The CMOS sensor will eventually “burn out” due to overexposure to light (not sure about this…)
2. The CMOS sensor is highly sensitive to light and can’t ‘reset’ quick enough. In which case, this new idea might not help anything - but would at least probably reduce the point of failures (those shutters don’t last forever), increase battery life, and eliminate ’shutter vibration’ which can cause blurring in long exposure photography