Parts of a camera

In my previous post on Taking a Better Photo, I talked about shutter and aperture and explained how they are use. Then I realized that most people probably don't know what I was talking about.

Since this blog is about taking photos using a point and shoot cameras, most people probably have never seen the insides of a camera.

I got an old SLR camera from my Dad and I decided to open it up and show you the parts of the camera so you can understand better what the parts are and hopefully help you understand the why and how of operating a camera.

A point and shoot camera will not have the same internals as an SLR camera, but the foundation is the same.

I'll post some photos and explanation in several parts so as not to overwhelm you.

Let me start with this photo.

This is an old Nikon F3 SLR camera. It an all manual camera, meaning, focusing is manual with the lens, film advance is manual, ISO setting is manual, basically, every setting with this camera has to be done manually. If you don't know what you're doing, you're going to be wasting a lot of film with this camera. This is part of the reason there wasn't a lot of people taking photos before, the cost of wasting film is quite high. So a lot of people tend to just take very few photos.

Here is another view of the camera.

Here you can see the shutter release button (button above the F3) as well as the shutter speed control (the big one with the numbers).

This is the back view.

Here you can see where the film goes in, the view finder or eyepiece, the film advance lever which is the rectangular one above the "Nikon" label that's attached to the big silver shutter release button.

The big square frame on the back is where you put the box label of the film you're using to remind you what kind of film you have in the camera. You basically tear of the end cover of the box and slip it in.

And finally, the front view.


These are the basic views of the camera, on my next post, I'll open up the insides so you can see the internal parts of the camera.

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