How Does A Camera Work?

A camera is one of the most important inventions of the history. With the help of camera one can preserve most beautiful moments of life. One can freeze the various emotional feelings of his life, for example- weeding, winning, laughing, crying etc. With the help of camera we can see pictures of all those things that are actually miles away from us. So, Camera is the best platform to preserve the memories.

Working of a camera
Basic working of a camera is extremely simple to understand. Three basic elements of a still camera are- the film (chemical element), camera body (mechanical element) and lens (optical element). These three elements work together, in order to produce clear, recognizable and crisp image. The working of a camera depends upon the way in which these elements are combined and calibrated.

SLR camera
Actually there are several ways of combining these three elements of a camera. In this article, example of SLR (manual single-lens-reflex) camera is taken in order to explain the basic working of a camera. In a SLR camera, a photographer is able to see the image (to be captured) on the provision screen of the camera and photographer can adjust everything (about the image) by just clicking some buttons and turning dials. No electricity is required to take a picture, so a SLR camera is able to provide us excellent quality pictures, without any special effort.

Lens is the optical element of the camera. A lens can be simply defines as the curved piece of plastic or glass. A lens actually collects the beams of light that are bouncing from the object and then it redirects them to create a real image of the object. This image will look just like the object placed in front of the lens.

Now a question may strike to your mind that “how can a lens (glass piece) do this?” Well the process is very simple to understand. When light enter from one medium to another medium, it changes its speed. Speed of light is more in air as compared to the speed of light in the glass. So, a lens slows down the speed of light.

Now when light enters into the glass, some part of the wave (that strikes first to the glass) will start slowing down before other part of the light. Now this effect can be understood by considering the analogy of pushing some shopping cart from the pavement to the grass. When right wheel of the shopping cart hits the grass, it slows down. But left wheel (on the pavement) keep moving at same speed. Now, as left wheel is moving faster then right wheel, shopping cart will take a turn to the right and it will enter to the grass. Same effect happens with the light. When it enters to the glass, it bends in a particular direction. And when it leaves the glass re-bending of the light takes place. In some convex lens or converging lens one or both sides possesses a curve. So, a ray of light that enters to the lens will undergo a bending towards the center of the lens. Now a lens captures the light that is coming from the object and by conducting sufficient bending of the light, lens mange to focus all the beams at a point. And at this point, formation of a real image takes place. This real image represents the focused object.

So we can conclude that a camera is very easy to operate and has a simple working. Why not you go out and click some pictures today

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