From the course: Canon 5D Mark III Essential Training

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What is an SLR?

What is an SLR? - 5D Tutorial

From the course: Canon 5D Mark III Essential Training

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What is an SLR?

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All cameras have at least one thing in common; they have a lens that sits in front of a focal plane. On that focal plane is a recording medium; either a piece of light sensitive film, or paper, or a digital image sensor. The focal plane needs to sit directly behind the lens, because the lens is used to focus light onto that recording medium. Another way to think of it is that the recording medium looks through the lens. What's tricky about camera design is that if the recording medium is sitting there looking through the lens, how is there room for you to look through the lens to frame your shot? Camera designers have wrestled with this problem since the beginning of photography, and they have come up with lots of solutions. For example, with a view camera, you actually take the recording medium off, so that you can look through your lens to line up the shot, and then you put the recording medium back on. Needless to say, this doesn't make for a particularly speedy shooting. In a twin…

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