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Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

There is a secondary purpose for sounds on digital cameras: it makes it obvious to people in the vicinity that someone has just taken a photo. This is, indeed, mandatory in some places. I don't believe there is an actual law on the books, but government guidance in Japan is that if you make a camera or phone with a camera feature it has to loudly announce itself and it should be impossible to turn that off short of damaging the device. (This is largely to prevent sexual misconduct.)

For example, if you turn down the volume to zero and set my phone to manner mode, it will ring on taking a picture loud enough to hear 20 feet away.

Similarly, current model electric cars (Prius et al) are designed to run less silent in certain circumstances, mostly for the benefit of pedestrians and cyclists around blind corners. (I don't know if they shipped that one to the US yet.)

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I know that there has been some talk about it here, but there is no sound on my Android phone default camera app.

Anyway is there a sound when you take video on yours?

Because if not, it seems kinda pointless.

Ditto, my android doesn't make a sound if the phone is in silent mode

I am a photographer and I know I'd hate this feature. It makes street photography a lot more difficult.

I assume by sexual misconduct you mean someone taking pictures in the bedroom (as opposed to photographing women at the beach, which is public space - unless specifically prohibited). I feel that is too specific a protection to make the lives of legit photographers difficult. Instead, more severe punishments could be implemented to protect men and women whose sex videos are filmed without consent.

I assume by sexual misconduct you mean someone taking pictures in the bedroom

More likely taking photos of someone in a semi-public place, e.g. changing rooms, on a train, in a café, etc.

In Japan, groping women and taking pictures up their skirts is a very very common practice among men. That's why they have women only passenger cars on trains[1]. The camera sounds are there to deter this behavior.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women-only_passenger_car

Indeed. And the reassuring clunk of the car door is as much to get you into a calm frame of mind before driving as anything.

My Nokia 5800, set to silent mode, does not make any sound, it just flashes. Just tried it indoors.

Is it sold in Japan?

I have a Sharp camera-phone, and in manner mode it does make a sound when taking any picture - except for the OCR and business card reading modes, in which it's impossible to save the image anyway. I found it inconvenient when I was at university and wanted to take the blackboard...

I've seen silent regular cameras, though.

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