 Now, so far we've concentrated sort of on how simple a camera is. But did you know that there's thousands of ways to make a camera? Like, people have already come up with thousands of ways to make a camera. I think that's so fascinating. When I'm out on the street sometimes, I'll see someone walk by taking photos and I'll be just staring at their camera wondering like, wow, how did they do that? Maybe it's just a sign that I'm a photographer or maybe that I'm a nerd, but I don't know. I think I share that with a lot of people out there. In this lesson, we're going to talk about some of the different types of cameras that there are out there, some of the types that have been used in the past, the ones that are being used now. So stay tuned for that. Let's get started though and start with the grandparent of these two cameras here. I started with a cell phone with a digital camera in it and a Nikon DSLR. But these cameras have a great, great, great, great grandmother and her name is the pinhole camera. This right here is a pinhole camera. We've talked about the pinhole camera a little bit when we talked about the history of the camera. Basically, there's just a little tiny pinhole, like a little poke right there in a piece of, probably in a piece of metal that they've put inside. They have this paper spread around in the back of this oatmeal box. They expose it to a little bit of light. They take the paper out, pop it in these tubs right here with some chemicals and then they have a photograph. Basically, it just all works on this principle that you're seeing over here to the right. You've got a little hole, light focuses through that hole onto the back, in this case of the oatmeal box, and you've got a picture. Now, moving up from there, cameras became very quickly much more complex. This camera over here to the left is an example of the sort of early styles of camera. This camera itself is actually, I think, a little newer, but this is what's called a large format camera. So, a large format camera. Basically, all that has to do with is the film size. It doesn't necessarily have to do with not every large format camera looks exactly like this, but a large format camera has a large piece of film in the back of it, so it's going to be like the size of a pretty good size book or something like that. The light goes through the lens, lands on the film, blah, you've got a picture. And a little bit smaller than that, you're going to move over here to the right, and you've got a medium format. So, you'll hear these words a lot, medium and large format. You're going to hear 35 millimeter, and all of these just have to do with film size. So, right here you see a 35 millimeter film, and this, and it's not 3.5, it's 35, right here you've got 120 millimeter film. And a medium format is generally around 120 millimeters. There's some other different sizes, random sizes, but 120 is a pretty standard medium format camera. And you can see here this camera is also a TLR, but we'll talk about what that is in a second. The most important thing to know right now is that it is a medium format camera. Now, we're going to go back a tiny bit. So, right after the pinhole camera, right behind the pinhole camera was the box camera. And the box camera is basically just a little tiny lens on the front of a box. And they're probably like something like two spools of film right here, or one where the film is coming from and one where it is going. Back here somewhere the film just kind of goes in a big horseshoe shape like that. And back here somewhere there's a spot where the film is sort of flattened, and the light goes through, boing, shoots onto the film, and you've got a picture. And then when you're done, you advance it. And that is just basically, I mean, this was a huge period of time when photography was just done on little box cameras like this. And they were very popular. You can see they've got a little handle. You could carry it with you on a picnic or wherever you're going. And they were a big deal. Now, right here to the right you see a folding camera. And this folding camera happens also at the same time to be a medium format camera. So it's I think a 120, something like that. And so the film goes inside. You pop out this lens when you want to use it. And when you're done, you just basically take this and push the lens back inside. You don't touch the glass, but you push the lens back inside and this door goes up, closes. And there you go. Now, doing the research I came across is literally my favorite camera of all time. And I really kind of want to go find one if I can. This is called a pigeon camera. I didn't even know these things existed. But a pigeon camera is basically made for spies. So this little guy right here is totally a spy. And he's spying for either the Germans or the Brits. And they would basically strap these cameras onto these poor little pigeons and send them out across their enemies territory. And try to get pictures, reconnaissance pictures, so that they could make battle plans and things like that. You can see his little wings are coming into the frame here in this one picture as he's flying over this really cool castle. And you can see also the lens was really wide angle. This here, we'll talk about lenses in another lesson, but you can see this is a very wide angle lens. And they basically just send these guys out on these like sort of suicide photography missions over Europe. So fascinating. I didn't know it existed. I was really excited when I found it, although I feel bad for the poor pigeons. So moving away from aerial photography, we'll get down to some really very, very practical cameras that are still often in use today. To the right you find what is probably, I guess among a certain generation of photographers, really the standard, the range finder right here. And we'll talk about how the range finder works in a second, but then first I'm going to give you the names of these other ones here. We've got the twin lens reflex. And right here we've got the single lens reflex. Now, let's start with, where should we start? We'll start with the twin lens reflex. The twin lens reflex is really cool because basically it's built with the idea of having one lens for a viewfinder. So this is the lens for your viewfinder. And this lens is for your film. So here's your film down here and that goes, so the picture being taken is through this lens and it goes onto the film back here. But the picture is not being taken through this lens. Through this lens you're just getting the image. It's kind of giving you a preview, trying to give you the same image that this lens is giving you. And the person using the camera standing sort of above it, you're like holding it on your stomach maybe. Looking down into here, and you can see on the bottom of this, we can't see it, but the person holding the camera can see a little viewfinder. It's like the screen on a digital camera, poking it, pointing up towards you, so it's flat and you're looking down on it. And you can see what this lens can see, which is in theory about the same thing as this lens on the bottom. So that's a twin lens reflex. Now at some point someone decided to try to get rid of the second lens, and they did with the single lens reflex. And basically they've done that by, we've talked about this already in the sort of how camera works lesson. The light comes in, it hits a mirror down here before it hits the film, gets bounced up into a prism, and then shot back out the viewfinder. So the viewer looks inside and can see exactly what this lens can. But they're basically the same exact thing. They're just sort of one is a fancier, more technical version of the other. Now over here to the left is probably sort of the grandmother of photography. It's sort of the one that a lot of the really amazing photographs of the last century were made on is the rangefinder. This Leica happened to have been a very important company in developing a really great rangefinder and was sort of like the professional favorite of a lot of photographers. Now the rangefinder, instead of being able to see through a lens, you see through the lens of the camera like on the single lens reflex. On the rangefinder, you're looking through sort of a viewfinder that's right here. They're called the rangefinder. You're seeing out of this your eyes behind here as the photographer. And the camera, the film, is seeing out of this lens right here. And in theory, they've tried to design them so that the viewfinder matches the lens. It's always perfectly possible and also especially for photographing things up close. You weren't always able to do that. But that kind of gives you an idea of what a rangefinder was. These are still in use and a lot of people buy them and use them, but they're not quite as popular as the single lens reflex, which has really kind of taken over as one of the sort of among professionals really the camera to use. Now, most people are going to have the option between basically two types of cameras. This right here is a point and shoot. And this is a digital SLR. So you guys remember single lens reflex. Single lens reflex. So the point and shoot camera is a simplified version of the digital SLR. They're basically, the point and shoot tries to contain everything inside of one little box. You don't have to change the lens. You don't have to do anything. And they're also often, but not always, a little bit more automated so that you don't have to make as many choices. The plus of a point and shoot camera is that it is a little bit more automatic and a little bit more done, set up for you. Digital SLRs now often have automatic settings and sometimes better automatic settings and point and shoots, but they're also more expensive. In terms of usability, the digital SLR is going to give you a lot more options. It's going to give you a lot of control over things that you can't control on the point and shoot. Now, also, another option that we have, which we didn't have before, are cell phones. Cell phones are taking better images every day. Each model that comes out is amazing how good the little digital cameras on them are getting. I would really encourage you, if you don't have the money to buy a point and shoot or a digital SLR, to start with your cell phone because almost every new camera has one. Sorry, almost every new phone has one. I think of them just as cameras. But pretty much every cell phone has a camera on it now and it's a great way to practice. I use mine as a notebook all the time. That was your introduction to all the different types of cameras that there are out there. In the next lesson, we're going to talk about how to pick out a good digital camera. This is mostly a digital class, so we're going to show you how to do that.