Photoclubalpha

I have read some of the discussions in the forum on sensor cleaning the a700, most of which I understand!
However I have not seen any mention of how to lock up the mirror to enable sensor cleaning. I could find no mention of this in the manual either.

Does anyone know how to do that? I

I also have a question about shutter noise, I shoot musicians and theatre regularly and am having some complaints about the shutter noise from paying patrons, obviously I want to be discrete as possible. I rememebr reading somehwere that Sony had put a lot of work into the shutter noise for the A700 to give it that "sexy" authentic noise. Is there any way of shutting it off ?

From the menu go to the last "page", where the 4th item from top is "Cleaning mode". Whenever pushing on the joystick you'll see a message: "After cleaning turn camera off. Continue?", just press on OK and the mirror is locked up.

As far as shutter noise is concerned, all you have to do is shoot with a telelens from some distance and with high ISO setting. Though the shutter sound of A700 is less than A100, nevertheless it might be annoying in such circumstances.