Analog Camera? Help!

[Guyy]

I am doing a little research on a 35 mm analog camera. Could someone answer my questions?

1. How does the 35 mm camera capture a image?
2. Why is the 35 mm camera analog and not digital?
3. How well is the image perserved? (By the film)

Really help if someone could answer my questions

[joseanes]

1. In B&W photography it used to be silver particles made sensitive to light (the film), I believe. They are fairly sensitive and that is why most pictures are exposed around 1/60 or 1/125th of a seccond.
2. Analog == Continuous.
Digital == Discrete.
Digital stores discrete pixels. Each pixel is of ONE and ONLY ONE color.
Analog is more gradual. There are no pixels. No discrete unit.

I am doing a little research on a 35 mm analog camera. Could someone answer my questions?

1. How does the 35 mm camera capture a image?
2. Why is the 35 mm camera analog and not digital?
3. How well is the image perserved? (By the film)

Really help if someone could answer my questions

[kornphlake]

My first impression is that you are working on some homework assignment and want to let us do all the research for you.

Being the nice guy I am I'll point you in the right direction, I wouldn't quote Kornphlake as a referance and I hope www.photographyreview.com doesn't show up in your bibliography unless it's because of one of the pro reveiws.

1) 35mm captures images the same way all cameras do. There is a shutter that opens for a predetermined amount of time and allows light to fall on the film. The film reacts chemically to the light and preserves the image for processing. A digital camera works the same way except the film is replaced by a digital sensor that converts the light into digital bits to be processed by a computer and displayed as an image.

2) A 35mm camera is analog because it is not digital. I wouldn't actually use the word analog to describe a 35mm camera, rather I'd simply call it a film camera. If you want a good definition of analog vs digital ask Jeeves. The term digital signifies that something is done with numbers, usually 1 and 0 which can be processed by transistors to do all kinds of neat things. Because you are asking about film cameras I won't dive too deeply into digital, I'll just say that a film camera is not digital because it doesn't convert light into numbers to be processed by a computer.

3) I'm not sure what you mean by this question. Film captures the image as accurately as the photographer has allowed, there are a number of factors that influence how the film is exposed as well as focus, optical quality of the lens and other equipment such as filters, flashes and reflectors. As far as shelf life I'm not too sure what the shelf life of film is, I know that prints made from flim over a hundred years ago are still around, I can't say the same about digital images because they haven't been around for that long. At this point I don't know if there is a shelf life for a CD with images, even digital prints haven't been around long enough to be reasonably certain they won't fade or discolor over time. I suspect that digital prints will last just as long as prints from film, at this points most labs that process film will develop the negative, scan it and print it digitally with the same process they would a digital print, there's really no archival advantage of either as far as I know.

[Michael Fanelli]

Digital stores discrete pixels. Each pixel is of ONE and ONLY ONE color. Analog is more gradual. There are no pixels. No discrete unit.

I am not sure where "analog" came from relating to film but it is certainly not a correct description. The silver is not continuous, each grain is either on or off. Each grain is a discrete unit. There are no "1/4 exposed" grains for example. In any case, the common terminology seems to assign "analog" to anything that uses film.