Sunday 20 November 2016

What makes sound in a DSLR camera?


Most of the time people recognise a photo is being captured when they hear the trademark CLAP-CLAP sound of the moving mirror. The sound (regardless of its source) is even useful for the photographer who then knows the camera really worked when (s)he pressed the shutter release. Many compacts make the sound electronically if the camera is otherwise too quiet to hear.


Mirror-slap is not the only source of sound. The question is, what makes sound in a DSLR camera, for having a list of all sources of sound that a DSLR creates.


Other questions have been asking about specific sounds, for example:



Curiousity to these noises rose from a question (in Flickr) where a surprised new owner of a Sony SLT A77 asked about the loud sound he hears when taking a photo. The sound soon turned out to be coming from the lens he used, not from his camera. There sure is a lot of things in motion when we take a photograph.



Answer



Very briefly, in a typical SLR camera with lens, the noisemaking parts are:




  • AF motor

  • diaphragm (aperture) control,

  • movable mirror (quiet mode may delay and/or slow the return of the mirror)

  • mechanical shutter--both release and cock (quiet mode sometimes separates these and may slow the latter)

  • optical stabilization (gyroscopes and actuators)

  • flash (if present)

  • speaker (if present)


Other than using your camera's quiet mode (if it has one), or muffling the sound by wrapping the camera in something, your only option may be to switch to a quieter system. Systems with fewer of the above tend to be quieter, eg. rangefinder cameras and mirrorless cameras.



Edit: Some users are reporting that some Sony lenses have surprisingly loud aperture actuation; to isolate and listen to your lens' aperture (any brand), you can set the lens to a setting other than wide open and press your camera's depth of field preview button. The sound you hear will be that of the aperture stopping down but nothing else.


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