My friend John Schuk recently invited me to come see a small play he was performing in. I went to see his Sketches of A Man in a small theater in Brooklyn on Friday. My friend Alex and I were lucky enough to procure front row seats for the event, which meant I had a great perspective for photos. The play consisted of a series of monologues by several different men facing a great tragedy in their lives. The tone was very serious and even downright creepy at times, so aside from the occasional giggle from comic relief and the soft hum of a ceiling fan, the whole crowd was dead silent for the better part of 90 minutes. I knew my D700′s shutter would be heard even in the cheap seats. I didn’t want to excessively distract the actors, nor the audience who was deeply immersed in every spoken word. So I limited myself to two shot attempts per performer. I was pleased with the results as I was lucky to have captured some key moments in each performance.

After the play was over and no one had given me a dirty look or a death stare, I figured I hadn’t bugged anyone too much. When we left the building, my friend Alex, who was obviously a little embarrassed by my actions, made a comment about my picture taking. “You know you can silence the shutter sound on your camera, right?”. I chuckled for a bit and then proceeded to explain to my good friend that unlike point & shoot cameras, dSLRs have moving parts and that the “shutter sound” is not a gimmicky sound effect, but the actual result of a real mechanical process for every picture. “Oh”. It’s OK, Alex. I was once a civilian too.

But the whole conversation got me thinking. I wouldn’t be surprised if Nikon and Canon both come up with silent or stealth shutters in the next fews years. Hell, Sony introduced the translucent mirror in some recent models. Now if they can all just make cameras that fly and cook me breakfast…