DSLR - It's Construction (Part 1)

For this particular post (and some other future posts about DSLR) is just for our common knowledge about DSLR. It might also be considered as useful knowledge for some enthusiastic beginners. I'm not a professional, and certainly ain't a beginner; I considered myself as intermediate. haha.. 

So, here goes.

1) What is DSLR? 

A DSLR stands for Digital Single-Lens Reflex (like, everybody knows already..duh...or is it?). Since this is the new era of technology, every 'documents' are digitized. So, every picture that you capture is transformed into digital form, where you can view it, you can analyze it, and you can delete it.

Single-Lens Reflex is a feature whereby the optical viewfinder on the camera displays the view through the camera lens. Basically, what it means here is that, what we see with our eyes is the same thing when viewed through the eye of the camera.

In details, Single-Lens is basically a feature which serves both for taking photographs and for the viewfinder. Meanwhile, Reflex is referred to the reflection of light. Bascially, inside the DSLR there is a mirror and the mirror guides the light that goes through the lens and onto the viewfinder by reflecting it upwards. Once it is reflected, it falls onto the the viewfinder focusing screen, then after that it goes through a pentaprism or pentamirror to the viewfinder eyepiece window. Below provided an example:

2) What is a Shutter?

The shutter is basically positioned in front of an image sensor in every DSLR body shell. Normally, the shutter is closed which prevents from the lights reaching the image sensor. The shutter is associated with the shutter-release button on the camera; when pressed, the mirror is raised and the shutter is opened, allowing the light to fall on the image sensor. Altering the shutter speed changes the length of time the shutter is open. Shown below is an example of a shutter unit.

3) What is an Aperture?

The aperture is basically a feature that is associated with lenses which they are fastened to the DSLR body. Each lenses has an opening; it consists of a diaphragm, composed of overlapping blades. It has the similarity of our retina. Altering the aperture value (f-number) changes the size of the opening, which then affects the amount of light it allows through. For an example: the higher the f-number, the smaller the size of the opening; the lower the f-number, the larger the size of the opening. Shown below is an example of an aperture: