I was at John Wayne Airport on Friday morning before the sun rose, heading to a training event in Colorado. Whenever I travel by air and I’m waiting in the airport, my mind takes me back to an article that ran in a photography magazine in the early 1980s when I was a young photographer, still in school, and hoping to make a place for myself in this industry.
If you've ever shot with a Leica M rangefinder camera, you probably know how effective the camera can be for stealthy shooting. After all, there's no mirror that needs to swing out of the way like there is in a DSLR, so the main sound you'll hear is the soft click of the shutter curtain flapping open to expose the film or sensor.
It's not just Leica aficionados that appreciate the silent shutter: did you know that the Leica M is held as the standard for silent photography in courtrooms across the United States?
When Fujifilm announced its latest wave of X-Series cameras earlier this year, the company stated that the big area they're focusing on is "speed". The new X20 and X100s feature extremely speedy autofocus, burst speed, and startup time. The 's' in X100s may officially stand for "speed," but it could just as well stand for "silent" or "stealth". Both cameras feature extremely silent shutters that won't attract attention while you're snapping away.
The video above by nycphotog2006 shows how silent the X20 is even while the leaf shutter is fluttering at a staggering 12fps.