[Don Schaeffer]

Now that my camera speaker no longer works I can hear the sound of the real shutter when I press the button. It sounds like "Thwack" or "thwunk"--more precisely, but in a whisper. The thing is it really haas a sound. What kind of shutter does it have by the way? I've become curious.

[NT73]

I read somewhere that all digital cameras have mechanical shutters as in the SLR's.
Of course I may have mis-read it.
If your warranty has run out, then open it up and have a look.

[Don Schaeffer]

I can live without the speaker. I don't want to open it up.

SLRs used a curtain shutter. I'm sure this is a leaf shutter like the old low-end range finder cameras.

[Don Schaeffer]

A response to this query elsewhere.


All of our consumer digicams use a form of leaf shutter, sometimes called an iris shutter. The shutter mechansim itself only needs to be very small which is why the sound is really not much more than a hint of sound.

--
Mike O'Brien
Eastman Kodak Company

[Kombisaurus]

Don, I think you're right that an SLR uses a curtain shutter while many (most?) compacts use a leaf shutter.

But... both shutters are very quiet.. and neither of them are responsible for the relatively loud "shutter sound" of an SLR.

That's because the main component of the loud "thunk" sound you hear when taking a photo on an SLR is not the shutter at all, its the sound of the mirror slap as the mirror (which allows the viewfinder to look through the lens when the shutter isn't open) flips up out of the way before the shutter opens. The shutter sound itself is a very quiet "snick", not much different to that of a compact camera.
This can be easily demonstrated with any SLR that has a "Mirror Lockup" feature (or MLU)... a feature which most DSLRs have these days to help eliminate the small vibrations caused by the mirror slap itself.
For Canon DSLRs at least, when used in conjunction with the self-timer the mirror lockup feature will flip the mirror up (producing the "thunk" sound), pause for a couple of seconds, then open the shutter (producing the "snick" sound) and take the shot as normal. Easily demonstrating the different sounds each part of the process produce.

[shuttertalk]

My D50 sounds more like a whack than a snick...

With my other compacts you can hear the shutter as well, if you realy listen for the sound... it's usually preceeded by the autofocus mechanism (whirr whirr)

[Don Schaeffer]

A tiny concert in the palm of your hand.

[Paul.R.Lindqvist]

My camera is more like "spank" "spank"....:/

/Paul L.

[Rabid Penguin]

mine goes "click-thunk!"

[Zig]

Hence the whisper of a Leica r/finder...and I have to say that the sound of my Pentax67 is like the pre-detonation sequence after stepping on a land-mine.: "TINnnGGG-whhack-ker-BLAM"
I can't believe I'm saying this; good job I'm among friends.

[Don Schaeffer]

i do like the shutter sound. I relish it on my Minolta film slr. It says, "something has been done."

[guerito]

Hehe, on the 1d mk 2 the shutter sound says "something has been done and it is final"

Onn the G9, the shutter is nearly noiseless. Good for sneaky images...

[matthew]

My E-3's shutter says "the reflexes of the person holding me are too slow to get off of the shutter button before more than one photo is taken."