I was listening, just now, to Hillary Clinton’s comments on Syria, and, all through it, you could hear the loud – LOUD! – clack, clack, clack of the cameras. 60 dB? 70 dB? More? Loud, anyway…
(Well, okay, that’s general question no. 1: how loud in dB are those cameras?)
But my real question is: why? Hasn’t camera technology progressed enough to provide high-quality professional journalists’ cameras that don’t sound like shot glasses falling to a marble floor? I’ll accept that they don’t want to move up to digital cameras yet; if the Washington Press Corps still wants to use b&w film cameras for political coverage, well, okay. They’ll move into the 21st century eventually. But couldn’t a camera be engineered that doesn’t “clack” so loudly that it drowns out the voice of a politician at a microphone?
A lot of digital cameras make that noise. It’s an option on the setup menu.
I like it, because it lets me know that I did press the button hard enough. Without that noise, sometimes I miss a shot because I thought I pressed it but I really didn’t. It also lets me know when I press it by mistake.
A DSLR is still an SLR, meaning there are mechanical components including a mirror that flips up when you take a picture that can be pretty noisy. You can use the mirror lock function on many SLRs to prevent the mirror from moving back and forth but it’s not universal and my understanding is it compromises the picture quality in some situations.
I’m sure some more knowledgeable posters will be along shortly to give better answers.
Without having seen the press conference, I’d hazard to guess that the sound of the cameras were picked up by another microphone which made them sound louder than they actually were in the room. If they were loud enough to make hearing a problem, I’d think something would be done to quiet them.
And I’m semi-amazed to learn that the Washington Press corps still uses film.
DSLRs make noise by virtue of having a moving mirror inside. There’s no menu-selectable noise here. If you want to spend north of $5,000 on the camera body, you can get one that’s quiet (but still not silent).
Of course, having thirty of them firing away at the same time only multiplies the noise.
As zoid mentions, some cameras have a mirror lock-up function, but if the mirror is up, you will not see anything throu the viewfinder.
I don’t know how universal it is, but they do use digital–Obama’s portrait was the first, in 2009.
As others have said, digital SLRs have a moving mirror inside. They have mechanical shutters as well. The only real noise difference between film and digital SLRs is the lack of whirring from the film advance.
dSLRs still have the highest image quality of any common camera type, although this is mostly a function of sensor size (they also tend to have better/faster focus). Some newer cameras, like Sony’s NEX series, are starting to compete, though.
Some newer digital models don’t have mirrors but use a semi transparent mirror to pass light to the photographer. Some of the Sony’s fit into this category, but they are probably not in the performance range that the pros are using, at least not yet.
Also the pros have a lot of cash invested in Nikon or Canon lenses and flash gear, so are not eager to switch brands just to eliminate mirror noise.
When the mirror is in the locked up position you can’t see through the viewfinder. That’s typically done for one of two reasons. Either to clean the sensor or to eliminate camera shake. For the latter, you get the camera focused on exactly what you want it, lock up the mirror then hit the shutter button, usually either by remote or with the timer so that you aren’t touching it the camera when it takes the picture. This is typically done for macro pictures with the aperture stopped down or in low light and/or with a slow shutter speed when even the slightest bit of camera shake will blur the picture.
The mirror flipping back and forth is what makes the camera a single lens reflex…both the sensor (or film) and the viewfinder both use the same lens. When you look through the viewfinder the mirror directs light through the lens up to your eye so you see (more or less) exactly what’s going to be photographed. When you hit the shutter button, the mirror moves out of the way so the light can hit the sensor.
It is the mirror that makes it a reflex. Reflex = reflection. The camera has a mirror.
The fact that the mirror flips out of the way is what allows you to use a single lens.
There were twin lens reflex cameras. TLRs versus SLRs. The upper lens was only used to provide light to the viewfinder, which was at 90 degrees to the lens axis - so you could view the viewfinder from above. The classic Rolleiflex for instance.
No professional camera deliberately makes silly shutter noises when you use it. Given it has a real shutter and reflex mirror it makes enough noise itself, but stupid noises are not part of the pro’s requirements. Even with the mirror locked up, the shutter itself makes some noise, albeit a lot less than the mirror thwacking away. Removing the need for a mirror remains a goal. The difficulty is twofold. The viewfinder needs to show exactly what the imager is going to see when the shutter is pushed. This means that the viewfinder must share the same optics. Rangefinders, twin lens reflex cameras all compromise this, and make use of a wide range of lenses impossible. Using a tiny display instead of an optical viewfinder is growing in use, but even the best screens have much poorer resolution than the optical systems. However the ability to add lots of information and things like the ability to zoom in on critical points for focus means they are not all bad. But a way to go yet.
For best image quality a mechanical shutter is still used. Electronic shutters don’t have the same performance as they remain immersed in the light from the scene even when not imaging. Thus suffer from loss of dynamic range and other issues.
Similarly the focussing system needs to see the same scene. The fastest focussing systems use a dedicated sensor in the viewfinder. Those that work by analysing the image on the main sensor (like most point and shoot cameras do) are much slower to focus. Something that makes the system useless for sports and journalism. So currently proper SLR configurations have significant advantages, and are likely to remain with us for some time.
To answer your first question (how loud in dB are those cameras): you really can’t answer that. First, dB is not a unit but a ratio (dBA, for instance, is a unit), and second, even dBA is a pretty useless unit without knowing the measuring distance from the source. Sound pressure level decreases with distance, so what was 70 dB at 1m is only going to be 60 dB at 10m. This is why I’m always a bit :smack: when people say that a jet or a motorcycle or a piece of construction equipment is 130 dB or whatever - where was the measurement taken?
While mechanical noise from the mirror slap and shutter of a DLSR is inevitable, as noted above, professional-grade cameras have had “silent” shooting modes for a while, though some are more successful than others. The Canon EOS 5D Mark III in silent mode, for example, is reported to be “noticeably quieter than normal operation” (Canon EOS 5D Mark III Review). Obviously not all cameras have this feature, and not all photographers will use it, but it’s a growing trend.
Yeah, I’d be surprised if there are more than one or two film shooters there. For daily news, it’s all digital and has been since the early 2000s. (The late 90s is when the transition really started happening. There were some Kodak digital bodies in the mid-90s that were used occasionally to get stuff on the wire ASAP while your film was developing, but it wasn’t until the 2.7MP Nikon D1 in 1998 that the mass movement to digital in news shooting started happening.)
Anyhow, yes, that’s how a shutter sounds on a digital SLR. Basically, a dSLR is a film SLR, except where you would have film in the back, you have a digital sensor. Otherwise, it functions and sounds very much like a film camera. If you need silent performance from a dSLR (like in film still photography), you need something known as a sound blimp, which is essentially a soundproofing housing that encases your camera and lens.
Sure. I’m a bit more familiar with Nikon’s products, so if you’re talking dSLRs, there’s the Nikon F6. Personally, I’d just buy a used F5 (my favorite 35mm film camera.) It’s amazing to see the F5 on sale used for $300-$500, when I bought it for about $2500 (IIRC) back in 1998.
That’s not a new idea, either. Decades before digital, there were a few SLR cameras that did this. The first to use the “pellicle mirror” was the Canon Pellix, in 1965, according to wiki:
You have the obvious disadvantage that some of the light that would normally be used for the exposure is diverted to the viewfinder (or LCD display, now). The mirror also gets dirty, and is hard to clean.
I assume a few reasons: they are custom designed for every camera body and every lens. Because of this, you don’t have the economy of scale. Also, they are fairly specialized items, and the people who use them are usually professionals who need them and are willing to pay the price for them. What the market will bear and all that. I didn’t even know the price, but when I saw your post, I guessed they’d be about $1000. And, sure enough, that’s the price. They’re a good deal cheaper than underwater housings for dSLRs, which can run over $4000 (but are, admittedly, a bit more complex.)