Thom Hogan, -Nikon expert and publisher of many Nikon camera manuals- published on his website(http://www.bythom.com) that D4 has a completely silent mode.
While this is very important for my personal use, I mailed him yesterday about this with a request for more details.
He answered me today:
The D4 can be configured to shoot with mirror constantly up in Live View mode, and with electronic shutter. There appear to be some limitations to that (still investigating), but like the electronic shutter on the Nikon 1, the camera would be completely silent while shooting.
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Thom Hogan, writer/photographer
author, Complete Guides to the Nikon cameras (22 and counting)
author, 34 books on photography, programming, and computing http://www.bythom.com
Steve Bingham wrote:I can see why an electronic shutter would be super. But why couldn't the flash sync then be raised to 1/500 with this?
They managed that even on the D70 - technology can't have moved so far back in the meantime right? I think that is a very sensible question to ask
I generally use CLS though so on the D700 you can synch faster anyway - on studio lights I find that the shutter speed doesn't make a difference for me - but it would be nice to have the flexibility when you are outside in bright light and still want shallow depth of field wouldn't it?
While in Live View, the camera can be configured to shoot up to 1920 x 1080 pixel JPEGs without making a sound. Set this way, the D4's mirror stays up and the shutter is not used to control the exposure time, so the picture taking process is truly silent. The D4 can shoot continuous bursts for several seconds in this mode.
The Nikon 1 electronic shutter has a max of 1/50 flash sync speed. Nikon has never explained a reason for this, but I suspect that it's because of the lack of rolling shutter. The Nikon 1 pretty much blasts the entire frame to the EXPEED 3 close to, but not exactly simultaneously, so there may be a timing issue with that that precludes a faster flash sync. The D4 seems to have Nikon 1-like capabilities in the sensor, thus I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same limitation involved.
At the moment, we don't know enough about the "silent JPEGs" to say anything much more than "you can do it, they're 2mp (HD TV format), and it is indeed silent." That's 2mp more than any other pro camera can do silently ;~).
Welcome to our forum Thom, nice to see you here, so it looks like the silent mode might actually just be taking a single frame of hd video then (which would explain) why it can be silent. I guess for actual silent more you wouldn't want flash anyway as that won't be discreet, I think that we were looking at other potential benefits of an electronic shutter.
. . . of course we can always use the high sync mode. We roughly lose a stop every time we double the shutter speed using a capable Nikon flash unit - like my SB800. 1/500 would only cost you APPROXIMATELY 1 stop less light (over using 1/250). Using a powerful flash makes a difference. The high speed sync mode works by firing the flash multiple times (at reduced power) to fill in as the curtain goes across the sensor plane. At 1/250 the entire sensor plane is exposed. At 1/500 the flash would need to fire twice, in rapid succession. At 1/1000 the flash would need to fire four times. Remember, the curtain at higher shutter speeds is really a slit, or opening, that travels across the sensor plane allowing light to enter. Of course it is an easy matter to use two speed lights (on a bracket) to make up for this lost f stop - or four mounted on a bracket like Joe McNally and others use - especially for sports. Check this out!!! Joe uses MANY flash units here:
