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Comment by rcthompson | Hacker News Reader

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rcthompson

> Click! Your camera just turned photons into bits.

Click! Your camera just made a skeuomorphic sound.

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My camera has a reflex mirror and a mechanical shutter.

Reflex mirror??!? Get out. Rangefinders forever, baby! http://instagram.com/p/i35NJLQAeM/

I said to a friend once that a new camera model had improved noise reduction. He thought I meant it was quieter when taking pictures, but I actually meant the image quality was clear in low light.

Depending on the camera reduced shutter noise might be a very welcome change, too ... my old 40D is quite loud.

flat design sound effects?

IIRC due to pervs chucking cameras onto selfie-sticks and taking upskirt photos and the like, digital cameras are required to make a clear and un-muteable (camera) sound in some countries.

The word you are looking for is onomatopoeia ..

Nope. Skeuomorphism is a design concept whereby things that are in some way derived from other things retain design elements that were necessary in the original but aren't in the copy. The iOS shutter sound is an audio file played out of the device speaker, whereas it was a natural byproduct of the mechanism in the system from which the iOS camera is derived---a film camera.

Ah .. but shutter sound does support a purpose: it lets people know that a picture is being taken.

Yes; in order to qualify as a skeuomorph it doesn't need to _not_ serve a purpose, it just needs to retain design cues that were essential to the function of the original but not to the function of the copy. The iOS camera could very well do its job of taking pictures without making a shutter sound. The shutter sound is an auditory cue for the user, but not a side effect of the camera's function.

As another example, consider the iOS notes app[1] before the iOS6 design transition. The app looked like a legal pad---complete with a leather binding across the top and remnants of pages torn off. These were essential functional characteristics of the original object, but were retained in the copy only to provide visual cues to the user that remind her that the app she is using is just like a notepad.

[1] http://cdn.redmondpie.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Notes-2...

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