Camera

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A camera is little more than a light-tight box containing some image recording media (usually film or digital sensor) with a shutter to control exposure of that media to light.

Anatomy of a Camera

Shutter

The shutter is the mechanism that opens and closes at specified intervals in order to allow light to pass through the lens. The two most common types of shutter are leaf shutter and focal plane shutter.

Back

Some cameras - especially medium format and large format cameras - have interchangeable backs. Different backs allow you to continue shooting without having to rewind and reload film. They also make it possible to use different film formats. Some cameras have backs available for everything from 35mm to 6x6 to 8x10 film.

Viewfinder

The viewfinder is the part of the camera that indicates, either optically or electronically, what will appear in the field of view of the lens. In most cases this is a glass window you look through to compose, but in some cases in can be as simple as one or more wire frames you use to approximate your field of view. Many of today's point-and-shoot digicams have omitted the optical viewfinder and use an LCD screen on the back of the camera as its viewfinder.

A diopter is an optical adjustment on the viewfinder of a camera that allows someone to adjust the viewfinder's magnification to their vision, removing the need to wear eyeglasses when looking through it. Diopter adjustments cannot compensate for all vision problems, only near and far sightedness can be compensated.

TTL Metering

TTL or through the lens metering is a method of metering in which a camera's built-in light meter reads the light coming through the lens. This is considered to be more accurate because the light meter only sees the light that will hit the focal plane and other ambient light conditions can't "fool" the meter.

Autoexposure

Cameras with auto-exposure are able to set the shutter speed and aperture automatically based on the TTL meter reading.

Center-Weighted

Center-weighted light-meters favor the center of the frame, while taking into account the rest of the frame to a lesser extent.

Autofocus

Autofocus cameras are able to adjust the lens electronically in order to get your desired subject "in focus".

Parallax

Parallax is an effect in photography where the image seen in the viewfinder is not the same as the image seen through the lens. Parallax error is most evident in close up work when using a viewfinder that does not look through the taking lens.