Movie camera

The movie camera is a type of photographic camera which takes a rapid sequence of photographs on film; once developed this film can be projected as a motion picture. 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".The frames are later played back in a movie projector at a specific speed, called the "frame rate" (number of frames per second) to give the illusion of motion. Our eyes and brain merge the separate pictures together to generate the illusion, a phenomenon called the "persistence of vision".

Most of the optical and mechanical elements of a movie camera are present in the movie projector. The camera will not have an ilumination source and will maintain its film stock in a light-tight enclosure. A camera will also have exposure control via an iris aperature. Otherwise, the requirements for film tensioning, take-up, inter-frame motion, and positioning are almost identical. See the movie projector article for these details and for the various film formats used.

Video cameras (not movie cameras) can broadly be classified into two categories : analog and digital. Analog cameras are of the "tube" type; they are bulky and generally used in professional studios. Digital cameras are of the "CCD type"; they are light and portable, and generally used for home/office purposes.