Film advance
Film advance is a mechanism for moving film from one spool to another incrementally one frame at a time.
Advance may be a manual process, and may be called winding, advance, wind-on and various other terms, and may use, for example, a knob, key, lever, slider or thumbwheel. For this method there must be some way of stopping winding when the next frame is reached; typical methods are the red window, or some more positive method where the camera has a roller or sprockets measuring the film to stop the winding at the correct point . Some cameras used more eccentric methods, such as the Werra, which had a ring around the lens for winding, or the Bencini Unimatic, where the shutter release button was pushed sideways to wind, and the Voigtländer Vitessa and Welta Penti - equipped with plungers.
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| falling plate mechanism of the Conley Quick Shot |
A few plate cameras - magazine cameras - (e.g. the Houghton Klito No.1) adopted a "falling plate" arrangement, where a number of plates were kept in a sprung magazine, usually behind the focal plane. After exposure, the exposed plate fell forward into a well, allowing the next one to move forward for use.
A related system had a magazine of plates, but a sliding mechanism to move them to the focal plane and back.
Many cameras - particularly later ones - have some form of automated wind-on, triggered by the shutter release. These use a clockwork mechanism (e.g. the Robot cameras or the Kodak Instamatic X-45; see Category:Spring motor), or an electric motor. On a number of SLR systems, there were add-on motor-wind devices (motor drives) produced between the 1960s and 1990s.
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