Cameras, Cameras Everywhere –

…and the one I use most often is the one in my cell phone.

Because the A to Z blogging challenge is starting soon I’ve been thinking a lot about cameras. That’s because I decided that cameras will be the theme I use for the challenge.

We have a few cameras (by few, I mean about 600), so I figured it would be easy. A greater challenge would be to narrow down the types of cameras.

I decided to go with single lens film cameras. You might ask, what other kinds of cameras are there? Besides digital cameras, of course.

For giggles, I thought I’d present here a little tutorial on the types of cameras out there.

View Cameras

This style epitomizes ‘old time photography.’ This is the sort of camera that would have had a hood for the photographer to toss over his head and would produce photos of people that were slightly blurred or stiff and awkward looking.

Box cameras

Of course, whenever I say ‘antique camera,’ people immediately start telling me about their old box cameras, like the Kodak Brownie.

Before you tell me about your own Brownie, check out my “B” post on April 2.

Point and shoot plastic cameras

These are some of my favorite cameras. They were cheap, even back then, but were made of the new material called ‘plastic’ that was all the rage. Specifically, many were made of the first plastic called bakelite.

Rangefinder cameras

With modern cameras, we can typically see what the camera is seeing and adjust the focus. But not so long ago, you couldn’t just look through the lens. To adjust the focus, you had to know how far away something was, and adjust the lens accordingly.

This could be done with a hand-held range-finder like the one I picture here.

Or the rangefinder can be built into the camera, and the camera can be focused directly through the rangefinder.

Single-lens reflex (SLR) cameras

With an SLR, you can look right through the lens of the camera and adjust the focus directly. Other settings, like exposure and shutter speed might still be manual.

Twin-lens reflex (TLR) cameras

These cameras have two lenses, a taking lens and a focusing lens. These are the ones that you hold at waist level and look down into in order to take a picture.

Digital cameras

I won’t photograph any digital cameras for this post. You know what they look like. I used a digital camera to take all the photos above. It was the digital camera built into my phone.

My how times have changed!