Hi

Just wondered if any of you guys (Emma will surely know this one?) can help me with a small photography question. I'm not the most technical of people, and when I'm researching on the net, I can't seem to find a definite answer to these questions - which are:

Do digital cameras have mirrors inside them?

If not, what reflects and captures the image?

Are there cameras which don't use mirrors of any kind?

I'm stuck on the end of a short story, have a great plot device but it all hinges on this one little detail. Any help greatly appreciated.

Thanks

JB

Digital cameras aren't fundamentally any different from film cameras, because light isn't digital.

In any camera, the lens captures the image and focuses it on a plane. That's all it is - the same as the lens in your eye focussing light on your retina. The plane can either be film (or a plate, but let's keep it simple) or an array of light-sensitive digital sensors which turn light into a digital charge and is usually called the CCD (charge coupled device) array.

Virtually only SLR (single lens reflex) cameras use mirrors. They are designed so that the light arriving through the lens is the image that the photographer sees. To do this mirrors are arranged to turn the light three times, and it arrives in the viewfinder the right way up (no, don't go there either) for the eye. The first mirror is in front of the film/CCD, so when you press the shutter button it flips up out of the way to expose it, which is where the characteristic 'click-clunk' sound comes from. The viewfinder goes blank for that fraction of a second too.

The second and third mirrors it needs are in the characteristic pyramid-shaped hump that your classic Nikon/Pentax/Canon has above the lens. These use 35mm film, while bigger cameras that have a mirror are the very serious and professional box-shape Hasselblads and Bronicas (don't go there either) which use bigger film (120 size).

Almost any other camera doesn't have mirrors. If it has a view-finder - a second little window that you look through, as well as the lens - then you can be sure it doesn't. Through it the photographer sees a very slightly different image from that hitting the film/CCD array, which beyond a few metres doesn't make much difference. Many cheaper digital cameras don't have proper optical viewfinders at all, and then the image will be the same as that coming into the lens: it's easy to take the digital image and display it on a nasty little screen on the back that you can't see in bright light at all.

Do ask any more, but I'll stop there because I'm several glasses of wine down and I'm typing this stuff from memory.

Emma

Emma, thanks so much. You managed to explain something quite technical in a way even I can understand, so heaven knows how astute you are without the wine!

I'm pretty sure you've told me what I wanted to hear, and saved the ending of a story in the process! I'll email you the direct question, which is a bit more esoteric, but I'd love to hear what you think. Don't want to say in here because it'll give the game away!

Thanks again.

JB