Movie Camera
The movie camera is a mechanical device with which a sequence of pictures is recorded in rapid succession on a roll of film. The invention of this device spawned a multi-billion dollar film industry whose movies have entertained audiences worldwide.
The history of the movie camera spans many years. In 1833, Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau (1801-1883) created the Phenakistoscope. When this apparatus, made up of a cardboard disk around which sequential drawings were attached, was rotated, the subject of the drawing appeared to move. In order to create the illusion of movement, photographs must be taken rapidly and later viewed rapidly. In 1872, Englishman Eadweard Muybridge used a series of cameras to take sequential pictures of a running horse. Two years later in France, astronomer Pierre Jules Janssen (1824-1907) designed a revolving camera attached to a telescope and used it to photograph Venus. By the late 1870s Muybridge dramatically increased camera shutter speed, and in 1880 he introduced his Zoopraxiscope, which could rapidly project series of individual photographs attached to a revolving drum.
Drawing on the work of Muybridge, Frenchman Etienne-Jules Marey in 1881 developed a photographic gun, with which a sequence of pictures could be quickly recorded around the circumference of a photographic plate. Later, when George Eastman introduced a gelatin-based film, Marey recorded images at faster speeds on rolled film. Working for Thomas Edison in 1889 William Kennedy Laurie Dickson (1860-1937) invented a motion picture camera, the Kinetograph. In it he used Eastman's perforated 35 mm film which set the standard for motion picture film. By 1891 Dickson had also developed the Kinetoscope a peephole film viewer.
Inspired by Kinetoscope, the team of brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière invented in 1894 their Cinématographe, which was both a camera and a projector. When filming, it incrementally advanced a 35 mm film behind a rotating shutter. Their first public showing of a motion picture in Paris on December 28, 1895 marked the beginning of cinema as we know it today. Frenchman Charles Pathé (1867-1957) separated the Lumière brothers' dual-purpose Cinématographe into a camera and an independent projector. In 1904, Pathé refined the camera to shoot film at variable speeds
Throughout the silent era of film, until about 1928, the loudness of movie cameras and their internal mechanisms did not matter during film because no sound was recorded. When sound technology was introduced, cameras had to become silent. At dawn of the sound ear, they were put in booths that drowned out their sound called blimps. However, this also limited the mobility of the camera making for very static, limited filmed images. In 1935, the first camera to contain an internal masking blimp was introduced, the Mitchell BNC (or blimped news camera). Though the Mitchell was portable, it was still heavy. Over the next forty years, movie cameras became lighter and quieter, and working on location outside of a studio became possible. Cameras become small enough to be hand held, so they could film shots as close to the subject as possible. But these hand held cameras often produced shaky, frenetic images. To produce smooth action shots, a camera would have to be mounted on a dolly, a platform on wheels that moves along a track. In 1976, the Steadicam was introduced. Invented by Garrett Brown, the Steadicam is a "hand-held" camera that shoots smooth action shots. The Steadicam operator wears a vest which has a supporting spring arm attached, and these provide the platform for the camera. Balanced by a device called a gimal, the camera can go anywhere its operator can go, and provide dolly-like motion.
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