Shutters are all over the board

Over the years I have owned cameras from across the noise spectrum, by which I mean the noise the shutter makes when it’s tripped has varied from near silence to cacophonous. From a gentle whisper to a metalllic explosion.

For the most part, it’s fair to assume most photographers would agree that noise is not a good thing. Not only does it distract and cause vibration, there’s something just wrong about it. It’s in our genetic make-up. Why do you think the costliest real estate is invariably in the quietest locations, be it Fifth Avenue mansions with one foot thick stone walls or the sweeping estates of the Bel Air with the nearest neighbor hundreds of yards distant?

Silence, then, is a premium priced attribute, yet that fact seems to have escaped many camera manufacturers. Thinking back, the large Pentax 6×7 I owned years ago had the most wonderful lenses, yet the only truly sharp results I obtained from it were when it was used with a studio flash, with which it unfortunately synchronized at very low speeds. The problem was that tripping the shutter set off an explosion so loud, that people a hundred yards distant would duck for cover wondering which cowboy had come to town, guns blazing. So nice as that big negative was, and it fit 16″ x 20″ paper near perfectly, the camera had to go. The ten explosions a roll plus the onset of carpal tunnel from trying to hold this beast to eye level, not to mention hearing problems, were simply too much.

My large format gear is at the other end of the noise spectrum. In fact the lens shutters are so nearly totally silent, an illusion enhanced by the distance of the shutter from the operator and the huge space between lens and film which acts as a baffle, that sometimes I wish the shutters were a tad louder. Take the time I was photographing by a waterfall. Did that shutter trip or not? In other words, a crucial element essential in the design of all machines, feedback to the operator, is missing. It’s the same problem that makes using a silent keyboard so difficult.

Engineers will point out that noise is not just sound. Rather, it’s a collection of sounds of varying frequency, volume and duration all mixed together. So while I have no idea what the optimal mix is, I do know that higher frequencies are not a good thing as they tend to amplify the apparent noise too much. On the other hand, too much low frequency sound, is just as bad. As it takes far more energy to generate a loud low frequency sound than a loud one of high pitch – compare a cello or double bass to a violin – too much of the low stuff means something is moving hard and fast. Like a mirror thudding into a frame, protected only by a strip of neoprene. That spells vibration.

The second noisiest camera I ever owned was the Rollei 6003 medium format single lens reflex. What with the large instant return mirror, the electrical diaphragm and the motor yanking the film to the next frame, you could not be inconspicuous using one of these beasts. Rollei must have done something right with damping and vibration control, however, as even images at 1/15th or 1/8th second on a solid tripod showed no blurring from camera movement. And as a studio camera par excellence there’s an argument to be made in favor of noise as the subject knows that the picture has been taken. There’s that feedback thing again.

The Nikon F wasn’t bad. Like everything else about the camera, the noise was purposeful. No nonsense. “Built to last” was the thought that came to mind when operating this brute of a camera. The Leicaflex SL that succeeded it in my tool kit gave the exact opposite impression. Tinny, limp-wristed, you always wondered how long things would last before the next trip to the repair shop. Quite a contrast to the magnificent solidity of the lenses.

The screw thread Leicas rangefinder were always far noisier than you expected. While their “clack” was not that obtrusive, it hardly meshed with the Leica’s reputation as a stealth camera. The M3 and its successors were superior, though I always wished they were quieter, especially with that irritating shutter bounce on 1/15th and 1/30th, which every mechanical shutter M has had. The best in this regard was the M6 I used for several years which had a zinc top plate replacing the brass in the M2 and M3. Brass is ideal for chrome plating, but my M6 was black, so zinc was used as a cost saving. That camera had a beautiful shutter sound, sadly not matched by its build quality which was dramatically inferior to the M2 and M3. Plus the quick jam loading system was an absolute catastrophe – you had to crimp the film end to ensure it did not slip out of the stines meant to grasp it. So the M6 moved on, but not on account of its shutter sound. With any mechanical Leica M (I have not used the electronic M7) you get wonderful tactile feedback from the shutter release, to the extent that you know exactly how much pressure is needed to trip the shutter. Worth its weight in gold, whether on the street or in the studio.

The Canon EOS 5D is nothing to get excited about either way. The timbre of the noise is not objectionable, the volume is middle of the road, but you are going to be noticed when you press the button. For an electrical release, feedback is not bad. The first pressure to lock in focus and exposure is easily distinguished from the second which releases the shutter. There’s not that progressive feel of the Leica M’s shutter release, but it’s a worthy effort.

Setting aside the minority audience for large format cameras, the two quietest shutters I have used were from opposite camps. The one on the Rollei 3.5F was purely mechanical and wonderfully quiet. Feedback was not the greatest, not helped by the awkward location of the button, but it was a joy to use and hear.

The other was in the Mamiya 6, also a medium format camera. This one is purely electronic, the shutter release is actually an electrical switch, with all the challenges that poses for feedback design. Owing to an absence of a flapping mirror and the use of between the lens shutters, the camera was simply wonderfully quiet and what you did hear was just right.

Mamiya 6. Noise? Just right.

Before closing, I have to say a word about the shutter in my Olympus 5050Z point and shoot. Near silent, Olympus felt obliged to add an option of an electronically generated shutter sound. This emanates from the camera’s speaker after the shutter is pressed. Unfortnately, it comes so late that it’s tomorrow by the time you hear it. Add the huge shutter lag and you have an example of how to get it dead wrong. Needless to add, the shutter release button has such poor resistance design that accidental exposures become the order of the day. At least you can switch off the electronic shutter noise.

So, camera designers, in my next camera I would like the sound of the Mamiya 6 with the tactile feedback of a Leica M2 or M3, with some of the overtones from the M6 for reassurance. The gun makers can use the Pentax 6×7 and Rollei 6003 as reference for their latest efforts. And the people at Olympus have some learning to do.

They will always be limited at the top.

Reading the other day that Konica/Minolta had given up making cameras I started getting worried that we are headed for a world with too few choices when it comes to manufacturers of photo gear. Competition improves the breed, after all. Then a few moments of reflection suggested that maybe there never has been more than a very small handful of choices when it comes to the best of the best. What the pros use.

At the start of the second World War, your choice was 35mm or medium format. Sure, large format has been around for a hundred or more years and soldiers on today, but it’s hardly a product with what you would call critical mass. In 35mm it was the world of the rangefinder – meaning Leica or Contax. The Contax had it all over the Leica, more sophisticated in every way, but damned by a fragile shutter mechanism. Leica countered with a great shutter and maybe the worst viewfinder/rangefinder yet invented. In medium format there was no choice. It was Rolleiflex or nothing. Now little about twin lens reflex design makes sense, but it worked, had great lenses and a negative big enough that even the average duffer could make a decent 8″ x 10″ print.

In film the choice was greater – Kodak, Agfa, Ilford, Perutz, Adox – all made great monochrome emulsions and Kodak, of course, was working on Kodachrome. Two violin players, the Leopolds – Mannes and Godowsky – were locked in a lab by the boys in Rochester and emerged a couple of years later with Kodachrome, rated at all of 12 ASA. Just in time for the film to be used by Nazi photographers to record Hitler as he set about destroying the great race whence these two geniuses of chemistry came. If the Leica was the greatest camera of the century, and it was, then Kodachrome owns a similar place in the world of film. Kodachrome was simply fabulous. Without it 35mm color photography would not have blossomed the way it did.

In the early fifties Leica finally made the single greatest 35mm camera of all time. The M3. Learning from the Zeiss Contax that integration of the viewfinder and rangefinder into one eyepiece might just be a good idea, and that making the thing bigger than a pinhole could be a selling feature, they added a wonderful, sharply delineated rangefinder rectangle and those projected, illuminated, nay, electric, field of view frames that left you in no doubt whatsoever as to what your lens was seeing. And you could use that viewfinder in almost non-existent light, focusing and framing with the utmost confidence, taking your picture with the near silent whisper of the Leica shutter. They didn’t stop there. They crafted what remains the greatest 35mm lens made. The 50mm Summicron which remains, to this day, the standard all Japanese manufacturers aspire to. This pairing was a high point in engineering aesthetics and optical design.

The M3 and its descendants lasted in the pro’s gadget bag through the mid-sixties when machismo dictated long lenses and brutal looks. The former to avoid the bullets, the latter to state unequivocally that your camera could double as a weapon in time of need. The smart people at Pentax may have invented the instant return mirror, but the Nikon F was the camera of the Viet Nam generation. Its brute good looks, augmented by the equally masculine finish of the lenses, said you were the Real Thing. Pentax was not to be outdone, however. They started painting their cameras black and had the smarts to give a few to a London fashion photographer par excellence named David Bailey. In stark contrast to the stodgy, patrician, epicene Beaton, wedded to his Rolleiflexes and his Royal sitters, Bailey rocked. He was a real man. Pentax pushed it. They ran one of the greatest camera ads ever. It showed a beaten up black Spotmatic, brass wear spots everywhere, with just three words. David Bailey’s Pentax. Wow! Here was a guy slogging it out in the studios of London with all those dolly birds and clearly having every bit as tough a time of it as the fellows in Nam with their Nikon Fs. Years later, Bailey admitted he had taken sandpaper to his Spotmatics and rubbed the paint off at strategic locations. It got him a lot of dates. Not bad for a few bob and a couple of minutes of elbow grease, huh? So in the ’60s your choice in 35mm was Nikon or Pentax.

David Hemmings played Bailey in Antonioni’s wonderful movie ˜Blow Up”, though his weapons of choice were a Nikon F and a Hasselblad. Change in the medium format world was slower than in the frenetic corner known as 35mm. At least you finally had a choice. It was no longer just a clunky twin lens reflex Rolleiflex. Why, the Hasselblad, scarcely more competent, said you had arrived. Because you could afford it. OK, so the viewfinder was lousy and the mirror did not return after you pressed the button, but good marketing saw to it that you did not notice.

Enter the seventies and eighties and Canon began to get noticed. They could not compete with Nikon or Pentax for charisma, those marques having earned their stripes in the hellish fields of Viet Nam and Carnaby Street. So they had to sell something else. And that something was technology, backed with abundant capital. Fast, small motors to move the film? Of course. Coreless linear motors to focus the lens? Naturally. Fast sensors to provide autofocus? Absoluement. Eye controlled focus? Well, we did it just to show that we could. Suddenly the competitors were rocked by this Japanese copier-making powerhouse with seemingly infinite resources, and they have been playing catch up ever since. But the old rule prevailed. In 35mm your choices were few at the top. Canon, Nikon, and maybe Pentax.

In medium format, the old guys were still at it. Rollei came out with a camera that four people bought, the SL66. Its huge mass and focal plane shutter which hated working with studio flash made sure that no one bought it. Zenza came out with something even worse, the Bronica, which jammed as soon as you looked at it. They had taken the worst of the Rollei and made it …. worse. Working photographers preferred proper flash synchronization and bought a Hasselblad. Rollei fixed that deficiency with their wonderful 6000 series of medium format SLRs, but it was too late. Traction had been ceded to Hasselblad. The Hasselblad may have been horribly unreliable but it was glamor personified. Plus it shared Rollei’s great German lens providers. An entry ticket to the world of Madison Avenue. So, like a Jaguar owner, you bought two hoping that one would survive while the other was in the shop.

Then in the ’90s, digital arrived. No matter that the first efforts were comical in the extreme. Digital was Now and the old protagonists, Canon and Nikon, were at it again, followed by a somewhat breathless Pentax. The latter had one thing the two others could never understand. The word ˜elegance” is part of Pentax’s genetic make up, a concept that never graced the worlds of Nikon and Canon. Olympus gave Pentax some competition when it came to chic design but let’s face it. What self respecting, red blooded American male was going to be seen with his wife’s camera? David Bailey’s Olympus? I don’t think so.

So, once again, choice was limited. Sure, you could have flirtations with minority brands like Minolta or Konica, but it was always rather comical to see the poor photographers using this gear. Like the people who were buying Saabs, hoping they would be sufficiently different that the downright horribleness of their choice would qualify them as eclectic, independent, thinkers. Wrong. They just didn’t get it.

Meanwhile, digital completely bypassed the medium format boys during this decade, and they will never recover the lead established by the big Japanese houses. When full frame digital beats medium format film, why would you blow $15k on a digital back for your Hassy when you could get a couple of Canon’s best bodies for the same coin and have something reliable to boot?

Leica? While issuing quarterly denials of impending bankruptcy their apparent goal is to sell only to Japanese collectors and tax exiles in Geneva. So you can’t have one. Settle for a Rolls or Bentley instead.

Film, meanwhile, had gone the way of Contax and Yashica and Konica and Minolta. The choices in color were now down to just two – Kodak and Fuji. The latter may have done a number on the former, taking away market share daily, but it’s all history now. Neither will be making color film by the end of the decade.

So there never have been that many choices at the top. Today it’s Canon or Nikon. Pentax for those willing to be different. And for medium format it’s Hasselblad digital, but who knows how long that will survive. And no one needs film.