Camera (still photography)

A camera is an optical device that records still images by focusing light onto film or an electronic sensor. Its controls regulate exposure, focus, and image framing.

Camera obscura: An optical device that projects an outside scene through a small opening onto an interior surface. It demonstrates the image-forming principle cameras use before adding a recording medium.
Exposure (photography): The amount of light recorded by a photographic medium during image capture. Camera settings combine to determine whether the recorded image is too bright or too dark.
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce: A French inventor who made the earliest surviving permanent photograph using a camera and light-sensitive materials. His 1820s experiments established that a camera image could be fixed permanently.
Single-lens reflex camera: A camera that uses a mirror and prism to show the lens's view through an optical viewfinder. Its through-the-lens viewing differs from rangefinder and view-camera focusing.
Instant camera: A camera that produces a developed physical photograph shortly after exposure using self-processing film. It makes immediate physical output part of the camera's use.
Lens (optics): A transparent optical element that refracts light to form or alter an image. The lens gathers light and focuses the scene onto film or a sensor.
Focal length: A measure of an optical system's ability to converge or diverge light, commonly used to describe camera lenses. It affects angle of view and the apparent scale of subjects.
Louis Daguerre: A French artist and inventor who developed the daguerreotype photographic process. His process made camera photography publicly practical in the nineteenth century.
Rangefinder camera: A camera that uses a separate rangefinder to measure subject distance and set lens focus. Its focusing system avoids the reflex mirror and differs from an SLR.
Panoramic photography: Photography that captures a wide field of view, often through a specialized camera or image stitching. Panoramic cameras adapt image capture to scenes wider than a standard frame.

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