Why did courtroom photographers put cameras inside boxes?
Asked 11/8/2016
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In older courtroom footage and documentaries, some photographers appear to have their cameras inside plastic or cardboard box-like covers. What were these covers for? Were they mainly to reduce shutter noise, or was there another reason cameras were boxed in during court proceedings?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
9y ago
2 Answers
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I can really only guess that they are early, or even home-made versions of a camera blimp, used to reduce the shutter noise.
They are predominantly used on movie/TV sets, by the show's stills photographer. Whilst few of them are truly 100% silent, they provide hopefully sufficient noise-reduction to satisfy the production's sound recordist.
I say 'hopefully' because no two recordists have the same expectations as to how quiet/far away the stills photographer ought to be whilst a take is rolling.
One can extrapolate that in a court-room, especially before the ubiquity of dedicated blimps & also dedicated court-room sound recordists, that one man's noisy was another man's acceptable.
See Wikipedia : Sound Blimp for a rather truncated history of the technology, Build a DIY Sound Blimp to Silence Your Camera for Less Than $100 for a recent version of a DIY blimp, or Jacobson Photographic Instruments for the Inventor's current line-up.
Originally by user57929. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user57929
9y ago
0
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They were most likely improvised or early versions of a sound blimp: a cover placed around a camera to muffle its noise.
That mattered much more with older film cameras, which were far louder than modern cameras. Besides the shutter itself, they could make noise from film advance mechanisms, changing film, and related handling. In quiet settings like courtrooms, those sounds could be considered distracting or inappropriate.
Historically, courts were also sensitive to other disruptions from press photography, including flash use. Those concerns helped lead to restrictions on courtroom photography and the tradition of courtroom sketch artists.
So your initial idea is probably right: the “boxes” were mainly there to reduce camera noise and make press photography less disruptive during proceedings. The fact that one photographer had no box likely reflects different court rules, different cameras, or different tolerance for noise in that courtroom.
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