The focal-plane shutter consists of two light-tight fabric blinds or a combination of metal blinds moving in succession across the film immediately in front of the image plane. The first blind uncovers the film and the second blind covers it up again, the two blinds forming a traveling slit the width of which determines the exposure time: the narrower the slit, the shorter the time. The actual travel time is fairly constant for all exposure times. A mechanism or electromagnet and control circuit triggers the release of the second blind. Focal-plane shutters are usually adjustable for exposure times between one second (or longer) and 1/1,000 to 1/4,000 second.

Diaphragm and shutter settings

In the lens diaphragm a series of leaves increases or decreases the opening to control the light passing through the lens to the film. The diaphragm control ring carries a scale of so-called f-numbers, or stop numbers, in a series: such as 1.4, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22, and 32. The squares of the f-numbers are inversely proportional to the amount of light admitted. In the above international standard series, each setting admits twice as much light as the next higher f-number, or stop (giving twice as much exposure).

Shutter settings on present-day cameras also follow a standard double-or-half sequence—e.g., 1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/15, 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250, 1/500, 1/1,000 second, and so forth. The shorter the exposure time, the “faster” the shutter speed.

Exposure values

An attempt to simplify the mathematics of f-number and shutter speed-control functions led to the formulation of exposure values (EV). These run in a simple whole-number series, each step (EV interval) doubling or halving the effective exposure. The lower the EV number, the greater the exposure. Thus, EV 10 gives twice as much exposure as EV 11 or half as much as EV 9. Each EV value covers a range of aperture/speed combinations of the same equivalent exposure; for instance, f/2.8 with 1/250 second, f/4 with 1/125 second, and f/5.6 with 1/60 second. For a time some cameras carried an EV scale and coupled the aperture and speed settings; at a given EV setting in such cameras selecting various speeds automatically adjusted the aperture to compensate and vice versa. Exposure-value setting scales became obsolete with exposure automation, but the notation remains in use to indicate either exposure levels or—at specified film speeds—lighting levels requiring a given exposure.

Automatic-diaphragm systems

On a camera with a viewing screen (view camera or single-lens reflex) viewing and focusing are carried out with the lens diaphragm fully open, but the exposure is often made at a smaller aperture. Reflex cameras (and increasingly also view cameras) therefore incorporate a mechanism that automatically or semiautomatically stops down (reduces) the lens to the working aperture immediately before the exposure.

Focusing aids

The eye is not good at recognizing slight unsharpness, so focusing screens (especially in reflex cameras) often incorporate focusing aids such as a split-image wedge alone or with a microprism area, in the screen centre. The split-image wedge consists of a pair of prism wedges that split an out-of-focus image into two sharp halves laterally displaced relative to one another. When the lens is correctly focused the image becomes continuous across the wedge area—a point that the eye can assess more precisely. The microprism area contains several hundred or thousand minute wedges that give a blurred image very ragged outlines and a broken-up texture; these clear abruptly as the image becomes sharp.

The focusing screen is often overlaid by a pattern of fine concentric lens sections. Called a Fresnel screen, it redirects the light from the screen corners toward the observer’s eye and makes the image evenly bright.

Cameras without a screen generally are equipped with a distance scale, the lens being set to the estimated object distance. More advanced cameras have an optical rangefinder as a distance-measuring aid; it consists of a viewfinder (see below) and a swinging mirror a few inches to one side of the viewfinder axis. As the eye views an image of the object, the mirror superimposes a second image from a second viewpoint. On turning the mirror through the correct angle, which depends on the object distance, the two images are made to coincide. The mirror movement can be linked with a distance scale, or coupled with the lens focusing adjustment. When the lens is incorrectly focused, the rangefinder shows a double or split image. In place of a rotating mirror, the rangefinder may use swinging or rotating optical wedges (prisms).

Autofocus systems

Some cameras evaluate the coincidence (or lack thereof) between two rangefinder images by image analysis with a microchip system. This signals electronically when the lens is set to the correct distance and often carries out the distance setting by a servomotor built into the camera. Such focusing automation makes the camera even simpler to use. Alternative automatic ranging systems used in amateur cameras depend on triangulation with infrared rays or pulses sent out by a small light-emitting diode (LED), or on measurement of the time an ultrasonic signal takes to be reflected back from the subject (sonar).

While these devices measure distance automatically, single-lens reflex cameras may incorporate electronic image-analysis systems to measure sharpness. The signal output of such systems actuates red or green LEDs in the camera finder system to show whether the image is sharp or not. The same signal can control a servomotor in the lens for fully automatic focusing. These devices are limited at low lighting and contrast levels—where the human eye also finds sharpness assessment difficult.