In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Joe Wilensky) wrote:
> I had a KX for a while, and from what I remember, it was a bit louder > than either of my MXes. I remember wondering if the mirror lockup on > the KX made much difference, since the whole shutter release > operation sounded just as loud and seemed to give the same amount of > "kick" when the mirror was locked up. I just tried my KM, which I think is the same shutter as a KX - though I could well be wrong. It's noticeably quieter than a Spotmatic F or an ESII, while they both have lenses mounted. The KM has a trace of the Spotmatic series ball-bearing noise at around 1/30th - after the shutter fires, there's a noise for a second or so that sounds like a ball-bearing race running down. Does the KX do that? Curiously enough, without a lens, the KM is much louder than the Spot F. This is of no practical importance, but I was interested enough to look further, and realised that the stop-down linkages on a K mount are smaller and move faster than those on an M42 body. So the noises they make are higher-pitched and thus more easily muffled by the body. Then there's the mirror movement to make more noise. An SLR is never going to be as quiet as a rangefinder camera, simply because so much more stuff moves around. But for really quiet you want a leaf shutter. The quietest camera I've ever used was a "Microcord" twin-lens reflex, a fifties British copy of a Rolleicord. The ping is quite high-pitched, but doesn't travel far, and people doesn't always realise that a TLR is a camera these days, since you don't hold it up to your eye. --- John Dallman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
