brindlelondonsquattingcat:

The inner workings of an SLR

I bought a cheap SLR at a thrift store last week and took it apart because of curiosity. For anyone who is curious about the insides of many of the cameras I like. 

• Image One: Cosina CT-1 in the condition I purchased it. It’s not a particularly good camera but all the parts work so it meant I could show you all of the insides
• Image Two: This is what a camera looks like when you take off the lens.
• Image Three [gif]: When adjusting the light let into your camera when taking a photo, one way you do so is by adjusting the size of the diaphragm of the lens - that is, how big or small the opening is. What you see here is me making that opening bigger or smaller
• Image Four: No, the back of the camera isn’t open yet. When you look through the viewfinder, there’s a mirror that reflects it so you’re looking into the lens from the viewfinder. Therefore, when you take off the lens you can do the reverse - right now you’re looking from where the lens should be, into the viewfinder
• Image Five: I took the back off the camera (this is where you load the film) but the mirror is still down
• Image Six: Close-up of the camera with the mirror down from the front
• Image Seven: When you take a photo, the camera raises the mirror and the shutter opens, exposing the back of the camera - where the film is - to light. Since the back isn’t on the camera, you can see right through to the other side of the camera - ball held behind it so you can see the difference between the wall and the camera
• Image Eight [gif]: This is particularly bad for the camera - I manually raised and lowered the mirror to show what it looks like
• Image Nine: This is the back of the camera, same as image seven - the back is off and the lens is off and the shutter is open with the mirror up so you can see right through. From this angle, you can see that in essence, with the lens removed, a film camera is a big box that opens sometimes to let light in
• Image Ten: Because this is an SLR, you see through the lens when you look into the viewfinder. Therefore, when you take a picture, the mirror is no longer reflecting into the lens and your viewfinder goes dark. Additionally, the shutter opens so the back of the film is exposed to light. Here you see the viewfinder going dark when the mirror is raised and the shutter is open so you see right to the other side of the camera.