SLR Mirror Slap Pavlovian Response

[Ron Scubadiver]

According to Wikipedia, the SLR was invented by Italians in 1948.  As I recall, the Nikon F has been with us since 1959.  Even with our amazing electronic digital SLR's the mirror flips up and back down making a distinctive sound.  There are new cameras without mirrors having all sorts of advantages and some important disadvantages.  However, I have come to associate mirror slap with pleasure, like Pavlov's dogs.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

A minoir nit-pick. The SLR principle goes back to the end of the 1800s and for smaller cameras became popular in the 1930's.

The Wikipedia article mentions the first camera with a pentaprism, which is so obscure nobody heard of it, instead of giving the honour to the Exacta system that was released just a little later and became a true game-changer in direct-viewing camera systems..

[Ron Scubadiver]

Thank you BR for the important clarification.  The first time I saw a Nikon F was in the early 60's.  I was in high school and some other students had them.  When inflation is taken into account, they were probably more expensive than a D810 is today.  Back then I shot dirt cheap bulk loaded Tri-X and developed it in Accufine.

[Akira]

I think Contax S was designed earlier, possibly in 1945.

[pluton]

  Even with our amazing electronic digital SLR's the mirror flips up and back down making a distinctive sound.  There are new cameras without mirrors having all sorts of advantages and some important disadvantages.  However, I have come to associate mirror slap with pleasure, like Pavlov's dogs.

I don't feel I need to hear the old-fashioned mirror noise.
I briefly handled a D810 in the shop, and replacing the spring powering mechanism for the mirror with one using a stepper motor has yielded a noticeably quieter mirror noise.  Apparently at a [claimed by a third party]slight cost in shutter lag.

[Erik Lund]

Nice idear with a stepper motor!

[Akira]

I don't feel I need to hear the old-fashioned mirror noise.
I briefly handled a D810 in the shop, and replacing the spring powering mechanism for the mirror with one using a stepper motor has yielded a noticeably quieter mirror noise.  Apparently at a [claimed by a third party]slight cost in shutter lag.

The advantage of the motor over the spring is that the speed can be controled throughout the whole stroke of the mirror movement.  On D810, the speed of the mirror-up motor is slowed down right before the mirror hits the bottom of the finder screen, which reduces the mirror shock significantly.  The elongated shutter lag compareed to that of D800 was also mentioned by the Nikon engineer.  The measurement by imaging resources supports that (54msec. vs 44msec.)(yeah, I know you are skeptical about their measurement...)