Well, yes, you can buy these, and they are new, but the F100 was discontinued in 2006 when Nikon announced they were bailing out of the film-camera business. I’m not sure about the EOS-1V but I’m thinking it has a similar history.
I am guessing that the reason that the camera noises sound so loud is that the audio equipment uses compressors/expanders to regulate the sound levels. The sensitivity increases when ambient sound is low so it picks up faint sounds, like camera clicks, and makes them louder. Louder sounds are brought down. This way pretty much everything (above some threshold, like A/C fans) is normalized to the same volume. The clicks, Hillary’s voice, gunshots, whatever.
I thought there were standards for that. I remember an OSHA inspection for noise at my old workplace, where they had a device that they held near computer printers and other equipment.
My fault…but I’m trying to learn! I knew there were such things as DSLRs… I just didn’t know they made the same horrid clacking noise as film-using SLRs from, say, the Watergate era. The sound hasn’t changed…
Anyway, that’s my real question: why hasn’t the sound changed, given that technology has made such leaps in the last forty years. Jet aircraft engines are much quieter than they were then; why not cameras?
In part, because engine manufacturers have been forced to make them quieter due to noise regulations. Quiet also tends to go with efficiency.
This isn’t true with SLRs; the quiet modes available on some cameras tend to decrease performance, and they happen to be quiet enough to not be a big deal. Still, the new mirror-less big-sensor cameras may make the problem go away on its own.
That’s what I came in to mention. The “quiet” mode on my dSLR helps with the noise by slowing the mirror down, but it comes at the cost of increased lag between quick shots. The only time I’ve ever found it useful was when I was taking pictures of a kitten and the quiet mode made it less likely to distract the fuzzball.
Of course the traditional press camera, has no mirror, and is typically a rangefinder design. However we are talking a few generations of technology ago. Further, they tended to use leaf shutters rather than the much more noisy focal plane shutters, and so could be almost silent. Modern very high end rangefinder/leaf shutter cameras exist. If quietness was a real issue pros could use a Leica M9 albeit with the limitation of 135mm for the longest lens, no autofocus, and a price than makes ones eyes water. For the residual film users of course there is the M7. The quality is superb, and despite the price are very popular. One suspects that the badge of the profession - the large camera, lots of lenses and gear would be hard for the pros to give up.
In reality SLR format cameras have got a lot quieter over the years. The shutter mechanisms have evolved remarkably, and the mechanical systems slamming the mirror around have been refined greatly. But given the speed of operation required there is only so much that can be done.
Egads. I had not seen that before. My thinking was more directed towards things like the Mamiya Press. A focal plane shutter that big would be a real monster. (I have a Mamiya 645, also with focal plane shutter - that is a monster too.)
It had both. There was the focal plane shutter that in later models would go up to 1/1000sec, as well as the lens shutter of your choice. I had a Speed Graphic Pacemaker that had the rear curtain focal plane shutter and a Grafex No. 1 in the lens. The Grafex would only go to 1/400 sec, but had the advantage of not introducing motion tilt. The lens shutter was also quieter, faster to cock, and and a little more robust, in my opinion.
There is (was?) also a Crown Graphic that was simply a Speed Graphic without the focal plane shutter. That’s what I have now, and you’d really have to look closely to see the difference.
Interesting. I see from Nikon’s website that that’s true. I did a search at B&H for ‘Nikon film cameras’ and the F100 was all that came up. (The F100, however, wasn’t on the Nikon site.)
The same search for Canon turned up just the 1V at B&H, and no film cameras on the Canon site.
I’m going to assume, however, that all of these are New Old Stock; I doubt either manufacturer still sets up an assembly line for them.
Ah, okay. I’ll never take your word again. I don’t find the sound offensively loud. In a quiet room you’ll notice it, sure, but again, if what you heard on TV was excessively noisy, I think the sound was amplified by a microphone, probably on the video camera itself, at the back of the room where the photographers and reporters were. News cameras have mics mounted on them for ambient sound and if that audio channel isn’t muted in editing, you’ll get all the background noise it recorded, including all the DSLRs near it. To make it worse, those mics are usually left on automatic gain (rather than setting the level manually) which tends to record sound louder.
ETA: You get the same effect from microphones on home video cameras. The person you’re taping twenty feet away can barely be heard, but the guy standing next to you talking about the game last night comes through loud and clear. :mad:
Well, it was radio (grin!) but, yeah, that makes sense. If all the technological press is in a ghetto at the back of the room, then there might be that kind of fratricide. It really did stand out, though, and if I had been a politician giving a press conference, I think I might have asked for a time-out. “Take all the photos you want… Happy? Okay: can it, guys, and here’s what I have to say about Syria…”
(But, of course, this wouldn’t work, since we, news consumers, want to see the pol’s face at the time he or she makes the big reveal…or the big gaffe…)
My turn for a smacking-forehead smiley.:smack: In that case, I don’t know why the cameras were so loud. In my experience (I was a news cameraman in another life) they weren’t a problem. But then I never shot a Secretary of State’s press conference.
On a tangent, here’s a short video of my finger pressing the shutter button on one of those old Kodaks. It’s a DCS 760, based on a Nikon F5 film body - the Kodaks were essentially cannibalised film cameras with digital components. Compare it with this video of an Olympus OM-10. You can barely hear the shutter over the sound of the motor drive. Older film SLRs tended to have noisy motor drives - here’s a chap rewinding film with the motor drive in his Nikon F3. Later film SLRs were much, much quieter and of course digital SLRs don’t have motor drives at all.
I always assumed that by 2012 the press would exclusively use video cameras, grabbing still frames for the few remaining newspapers, but it seems that old-fashioned still SLR cameras are still around. It’s fascinating and a bit melancholic to go through the LIFE picture archive, looking at photojournalists from the past using tiny rangefinders professionally; fast-forward several decades and photojournalists look like this. Perhaps the technology will miniaturise as it advances, and in a few years the journalists will look like the latter person carrying the former person’s camera.
I don’t find the sound offensively loud. In a quiet room you’ll notice it, sure, but again, if what you heard on TV was excessively noisy, I think the sound was amplified by a microphone, probably on the video camera itself, at the back of the room where the photographers and reporters were. News cameras have mics mounted on them for ambient sound and if that audio channel isn’t muted in editing, you’ll get all the background noise it recorded, including all the DSLRs near it. To make it worse, those mics are usually left on automatic gain (rather than setting the level manually) which tends to record sound louder.