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Leaf Shutters and Living with Disappointment

by Shane Lighter

May 5, 2014

At the end of my first week at Algonquin College, there occurred a moment of extreme disappointment. This was my first week in college, my first week in their Photography program and, truth be told, my first week handling real cameras. And on Friday we were assembling the 4×5 camera systems that we rented from the school.

Putting together a Sinar 4×5 is fairly straightforward, yet time-consuming. About a half-hour time-consuming…especially when it’s your first time. And so, half-an-hour later I have an assembled Sinar 4×5 View Camera. Now time to cock the shutter, press the cable-release and…disappointment.

Sure, it worked. Just not the way I wanted it to. I wanted a loud slap, a big bang, some kind of explosion perhaps. Instead, just the soft mechanical click:

(Cannot see the embedded player? Use this direct link to the sounds)

That’s it. There’s no mirror slap, no film advancement, no flash tubes going off. For all the work and patience I put into this, I wanted some kind of auditory satisfaction.

Things get a little better as you increase your shutter speed. At one second, you get a nice, mechanical buzz as the timing mechanism counts down:

Nowadays, the sounds that surround me are quite different. And in some ways, much more satisfying. My main camera is a Nikon D800e. Here’s the shutter on High Continuous:

But even better is the sound of some flash heads firing. Here’s some Norman flash heads at full power:

And there’s always the slippery printer and the droning scanner:

However, to this day, the camera sound I love the most is the mirror slap from a medium format camera. The clunky, heavy thud really made you feel like something important had just happened. Hopefully it had.

More often than not, what we hear today is a rendition of sounds, not least from the digital cameras that fit in your pocket. Take your iPhone. It sounds like a camera, but it could sound like anything (or nothing at all, they’re actually silent). For an interesting listen about designing the sounds around us, check out this podcast by 99% Invisible

 

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Shane Lighter
Shane Lighter
Contributor, Royal BC Museum
After college I went on to pursue a degree in Psychology at Nipissing University for some reason. I’m still not really sure why. It was okay. I managed to stay employed in the photographic industry in one way or another (usually another) throughout all this time, often at photo labs and print shops. And I’ve never shot a wedding.
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Categorized Audio, Photography

Published April 16, 2014

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Cite “Leaf Shutters and Living with Disappointment”

Shane Lighter, “Leaf Shutters and Living with Disappointment, ” Curious Quarterly Journal 001 (2014), accessed January 18, 2021. https://curious.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/shanes-article/
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