What is Photography?
Photography is the process of recording pictures by capturing light patterns reflected or emitted from objects on light-sensitive silver halide based chemical or electronic medium during a timed exposure, usually through a photographic lens in a device known as a camera that also stores the resulting information chemically (film) or electronically (digital). (read more)
Brief History
Camera Obscura or dark room/chamber, an optical process that had been in existence for at least four hundred years, is an optical device used in drawing, and one of the ancestral threads leading to the invention of photography. In English, today’s photographic devices are still known as “cameras”. (read more)
Camera Parts and Functions
In learning photography, whether digital, film, or lomography, it is important to understand camera parts and function. The understanding you’ll about to gain will be the foundation of your knowledge in the field of photography.
Photographic Lens
Also known as objective lens or photographic objective, it draws the light into the camera and focuses it on the film plane. A lens may be permanently fixed to a camera, or it may be interchangeable with different types and classification of lenses depending on uses and characteristics and other elements such as focal lengths, apertures, etc.
Shutter
This part of a camera allows light to pass for a desired and controlled length of time. Shutters can be fitted into two positions. A leaf shutter is located between or just behind the lens elements, while a focal plane shutter is located in front of the film plane.
Shutter Release
The button that releases or “trips” the shutter mechanism.
Film Advance Lever or Knob
This part functions to transport the film from one frame to the next on the roll of film.
Aperture
It dilates and contracts to control the diameter of the hole that the light passes though, to let in more or less light. It is controlled by the f-stop ring.
Viewfinder
The “window” through which you look to frame your picture.
Film Rewind Knob
This knob rewinds the film back into the film cassette.
Flash Shoe
This is the point at which the flash or flash cube is mounted or attached.
Shutter Speed Control
This camera part controls the length of time the shutter remains open. Typical shutter speeds are measured in fractions of a second, such as: 1/30 1/60 1/125 1/250 1/500 and 1/1000 of a second.
