The Camera History and Basic Functions

1. In Latin "camera obscura" means "dark room", this "camera obscura" effect is created when a tiny hole is created in the wall of a completely dark room. The light projects an image of what is outside, but the image is upside down.

2. In the 17th century, Issac Newton and Christian Huygens perfected the ways of making "high quality" lenses, this brought us a step closer to creating the modern camera.

3. The parts of the first modern camera, invented by Niepce, included; a glass lense, a dark box and film.

4. Niepce's early camera and the modern camera work in similar ways; light passes through the lensed then exposes the film, and in the end a photo is created.

5. Modern cameras use an electronic sensor called a CCD to capture photos.

6. In Auto mode, the camera does most of the work while in Program mode you control things like flash, zoom, and exposure.

7. In Portrait mode, the camera will attempt to blur out the background and will use the fastest lense setting, to take a picture of one subject most likely a person.

8. Sports mode will use the highest shutter speed possible and try to capture motion like running, jumping and dancing.

9. In manual mode, the photographer has to set up the wanted shutter speed and aperture mode.

10. You should do a "half- press" on the trigger button because you will have faster camera response time, more control over focus, and it encourages better composition.

11. That symbol means that flash is disabled or there is no flash, you would use this when you only want to use natural light for a more dramatic picture.

12. This symbol represents auto-flash, this is when the camera decides to turn on the flash when it thinks there isn't enough light.

13. If there is too much light exposure the picture will seem washed out.

14. If there isn't enough light, the picture will be too dark.

15. The term "stop" is a relative measurement of light.

16. If we were on another planet and there are 2 suns, the new planet would be one stop brighter than Earth.

17. If we were on a planet with 4 suns, it would be one stop brighter than a planet with 2 suns but two stops brighter than Earth.

18. The longer the shutter speed, the more light is going to come in.

19. The shorter the shutter speed, less light is going to come in.

20. The aperture controls how large or small the opening will be.

21. To get more light, you can adjust the aperture to a have a larger opening.