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Though I talk quite a lot about shutter speed in this blog, the reality is that few digital cameras have a real shutter in the sense that 35mm cameras have shutters. The 35mm cameras usually have a physical barrier that blocks light from entering the chamber where the film is stored. This mechanism—the shutter blade—moves lightning fast, able to deliver shutter speeds as fast as 1/8000 of a second. That’s fast. Digital cameras, in comparison, often don’t have real, physical shutters. You can verify this yourself with a simple experiment: When you press the shutter release on a 35mm camera, you can hear the quick, metallic click of the shutter blade opening and closing. A digital camera may not make any noise at all. Or it might make an obviously fake “click” sound through the camera’s speaker (Kodak and Sony cameras tend do this). It can, in fact, be quite difficult to discern whether a picture has been taken at all until you get used to the way digital cameras work. When I had my first digital camera, I actually had to look at the LCD display on the back of the camera to see if the picture was captured, or if for some mysterious reason the camera was still waiting to grab the shot. So if there’s no shutter blade, how is the picture actually taken? Often, the CCD is simply turned on long enough to expose the picture. Since the CCD is an electronic component that acts as the camera’s film, it can be actuated electronically for whatever exposure time is needed. In addition, the camera’s aperture may close completely to keep light from reaching the CCD—prolonged exposure to sunlight can damage this sensitive part of the camera. But the aperture needn’t spring open and closed as quickly as the shutter blade in a 35mm camera, so the sound it makes isn’t as dramatic. You’ll hardly notice it at all.

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