> I certainly understand that a large noisey camera would be a > disadvantage for street photography, and honestly, I think the same > disadvantage would apply to photojournalism, for many of the same > reasons.
Photojournalism as I know it is seldom practiced in conditions where stealth and unobtrusiveness are actually important. The subjects know you are there, but they normally don't worry about it. The relatively long time you have to spend on a given shoot to get something good pretty much makes it impossible to be unnoticed. PJs can certainly be DISTRACTING, but that is often as much a matter of their conduct as the noise of their equipment and the constant firing of flashes (which appears much decreased by digital's good high-ISO performance). I also find modern pro DSLRs to be quieter than film cameras, although certainly not as quiet as a rangefinder. There's a lot of damping of sound, plus the high-speed optimizations tend to make the exposure cycle very short. The major noise of pro film SLRs was always the motorized film transport. DJE
