movie camera

An IMAX cinema camera, displayed at the National Science and Media Museum, Bradford, England. A movie camera (also known as a motion picture camera, or cine-camera) is a type of photographic camera that rapidly takes a sequence of photographs, either onto film stock or an image sensor, in order to produce a moving image to display on a screen. In contrast to the still camera, which captures a single image at a time, the movie camera takes a series of images by way of an intermittent mechanism or by electronic means; each image is a frame of film or video. The frames are projected through a movie projector or a video projector at a specific frame rate to show the moving picture. The historical answer to the eye and brain's ability to perceive separate frames as continuous and smooth moving images was persistence of vision, but phi phenomenon and beta movement are explanations developed in the 20th century. Higher frame rates allow for the perception of smoother motion, while lower frame rates will produce flicker or strobe effects.

History