Photography

Photography (pronounced /f?'t?gr?fi/[1]) is the science, process, activity and art of creating still or moving pictures by recording radiation on a sensitive medium, such as a photographic film, or an electronic sensor. Light patterns reflected or emitted from objects activate a sensitive chemical or electronic sensor during a timed exposure, usually through a photographic lens in a device known as a camera that also stores the resulting information chemically or electronically. Photography has many uses for business, science, art and pleasure.

Lens and mounting of a large-format camera.

A historic camera: the Contax S of 1949 — the first pentaprism SLR.

Nikon F of 1959 — the first 35mm film system camera.

Late Production Minox B camera with later style "honeycomb" selenium light meter

A portable folding reflector positioned to "bounce" sunlight onto a model

The word "photograph" was coined in 1839 by Sir John Herschel and is based on the Greek f?? (phos) "light" and ??af? (graphê) "representation by means of lines" or "drawing", together meaning "drawing with light".[2] We now know this meaning, in the modern sense, refers to light graffiti. Traditionally, the products of photography have been called negatives and photographs, commonly shortened to photos.



The camera or camera obscura is the image-forming device, and photographic film or a silicon electronic image sensor is the sensing medium. The respective recording medium can be the film itself, or a digital electronic or magnetic memory.

Photographers control the camera and lens to "expose" the light recording material (such as film) to the required amount of light to form a "latent image" (on film) or "raw file" (in digital cameras) which, after appropriate processing, is converted to a usable image. Digital cameras use an electronic image sensor based on light-sensitive electronics such as charge-coupled device (CCD) or complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology. The resulting digital image is stored electronically, but can be reproduced on paper or film.

The movie camera is a type of photographic camera which takes a rapid sequence of photographs on strips of film. In contrast to a still camera, which captures a single snapshot at a time, the movie camera takes a series of images, each called a "frame". This is accomplished through an intermittent mechanism. The frames are later played back in a movie projector at a specific speed, called the "frame rate" (number of frames per second). While viewing, a person's eyes and brain merge the separate pictures together to create the illusion of motion.[3]