shutter noise

[yakbut]

I was out last week trying to take pics of a kestral. after watching the bird for a while i realised it prefered to hunt between two sand dunes i spent ages getting myself in a good position to get a shot if it came back. When it came back i could se it hovering watching some prey down in the dune, i resisted taking shots in flight and waited for it to dive on its prey (it looked like a mouse) down came the kestrel pouncing on its prey time to take the photo, one shot and it turned its head in my direction and imediately flew off. I dont regard my shutter as any more noisy than other 20D's. is there any way to quiten down the shutter. Maybe canon will make their next generation of cameras quieter.

[tim]

There's no real way to make it quieter, except maybe putting it inside an enclosure, or some similar system.

[Jim G]

I've never used a 1DsMkII or anything that sophisticated but I've heard that their shutter is much quieter... did they achieve this by enclosing it in something or just using a different coating or something?

[Pekka]

I've never used a 1DsMkII or anything that sophisticated but I've heard that their shutter is much quieter... did they achieve this by enclosing it in something or just using a different coating or something?

20D has louder shutter noise partially because its shutter unit has to make more complex movement due to being closer to lens mount. Of course lack of weather sealing contributes to the noise, too.

1D(s) Mark II has personal function to reduce shutter noise and it works very well. It basically works like this: you press shutter release, mirror flips out of way and image is exposed (basically you hear a "click")- the mirror is returned slowly when you release your finger pressure (you hear quiet whirring noise). That mode is not available in hi fps shooting.

Decibels are only part of "disturbance factor" of a sound. Animals are very sensitive to high frequencies. You can hear clearly in sound clips that 20D has more high content, and here you can also see it.

Upper window is 20D, lower 1D Mark II. Yellow color means higher frequencies, both files are normalized and phase corrected, sound file was saved with 22KHz, so highest possible frequency in recorded files was 11KHz. You can also see the mechanical movement of the mirror in the amplitide graph. I do not know what shutter speed was used, but to me it looks like 20D has something moving there _while_ the exposure was taken!

http://photography-on-the.net/stuff/sounds.jpg

[yakbut]

Thanks everyone i guess its time to start saving for a
1D(s) Mark II gonna take me a while though. Im gonna try wraping my 20D in a towel in the mean time.