Smile for the camera
There you are with that stuffed bear you had when you were two. And here
you are with that big fish you caught last summer. Both times someone
took your picture. The camera made a copy of the way you looked.
A camera ‘\’sees” pictures almost the way you do. It has a lens that
acts like the lens in your eye. The lens gathers the light and bends it,
so that it falls on the film inside. The light \”prints” a picture on
the film.
The shutter acts like your eyelid—but most of the time the shutter is
closed. When you press a button, the shutter winks open for just a small
part of a second to let the light hit the film.
Before you take a picture, you push a lever or wind a knob. The last
picture you took moves out of the way and a new part of the film moves
into place. Next you look through a window called a viewfinder to see
what will be in the picture. Finally you press the button. Wink—the
shutter opens and closes. When the film is developed, you’ll have a
picture you can keep—a picture that shows what you and the camera saw.
The lens of a camera bends light rays so that they focus, or come
together, on the film. It is the light rays that “print” the picture on
the film.
