Nikon F Motor Black Camera 50mm Austin Calhoon Photograph

A motor drive, in the field of photography, is a powered film transport mechanism. Historically, film loading, advancing, and rewinding were all manually driven functions. The desires of professional photographers for more efficient shooting, particularly in sports and wildlife photography, and the desires of amateur and novice photographers for easier to use cameras both drove the development of automatic film transport. Some early developments were made with

clockwork Clockwork refers to the inner workings of either mechanical devices called clocks and watches (where it is also called the movement) or other mechanisms that work similarly, using a series of gears driven by a spring or weight. A clockwork mec ...

drives, but most development in the field has been in the direction of electrically driven transport. At first, motor drives were external units that attached to the basic camera body, normally beneath it, with an interface consisting of a physical drive socket and some electrical contacts to signal the drive when to actuate. Beginning in the late 1970s, motor drives began to be integrated into cameras themselves—at first, in compact cameras for the beginner market, and by the 1980s, in amateur-grade and later professional-grade

single lens reflex A single-lens reflex camera (SLR) is a camera that typically uses a mirror and prism system (hence "reflex" from the mirror's reflection) that permits the photographer to view through the lens and see exactly what will be captured. With twin l ...

cameras. By the 1990s, the vast majority of

35mm 35 mm may refer to: * 135 film, a type of still photography format commonly referred to as 35 mm film * 35 mm movie film, a type of motion picture film stock * 35MM 35 mm may refer to: * 135 film, a type of still photography format ...

cameras had integral motor drive, and the feature found its way into some

medium format camera Medium format has traditionally referred to a film format in photography and the related cameras and equipment that use film. Nowadays, the term applies to film and digital cameras that record images on media larger than the used in 35&nbs ...

s as well. Motor drives for compact and amateur cameras wind slowly—shot-to-shot intervals of approximately a second are commonplace. Professional grade cameras are faster, with speeds up to ten

frames per second A frame is often a structural system that supports other components of a physical construction and/or steel frame that limits the construction's extent. Frame and FRAME may also refer to: Physical objects In building construction *Framing (con ...

(fps). The first 35 mm SLR to achieve such a shooting speed was Nikon's F High Speed Motor Drive camera, first developed for the 1971 Chicago Photo Expo with 7 fps.cameraquest.com, Nikon F 7 fps High Speed
/ref> To enable this speed and allow the photographer to more easily track the moving subject, this camera used a fixed, semi-transparent

pellicle mirror A pellicle mirror is an ultra-thin, ultra-lightweight semi-transparent mirror employed in the light path of an optical instrument, splitting the light beam into two separate beams, both of reduced light intensity. Splitting the beam allows its use ...

instead of a moving mirror. Later special Canon models used similar mechanisms to achieve such speeds, while cameras with moving mirrors reached approximately five frames per second by the 1980s. Today, the fastest professional models from

Canon Canon or Canons may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base * Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture ** Western ca ...

and

Nikon (, ; ), also known just as Nikon, is a Japanese multinational corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, specializing in optics and imaging products. The companies held by Nikon form the Nikon Group. Nikon's products include cameras, camera ...

achieve approximately ten frames per second with a moving mirror. In the

digital camera A digital camera is a camera that captures photographs in digital memory. Most cameras produced today are digital, largely replacing those that capture images on photographic film. Digital cameras are now widely incorporated into mobile devices ...

era, some users continue to refer to continuous shooting modes as "motor drive". Many camera models refer to different shooting modes—single shot, burst, continuous,

self timer A self timer is a device on a camera that gives a delay between pressing the shutter release and the shutter's firing. It is most commonly used to let the photographer to take a photo of themselves (often with a group of other people), hence t ...

—as drive modes, thus keeping alive the terminology of film. An external

battery grip A battery grip is an accessory for an SLR/DSLR (and occasionally other cameras), which allows the camera to hold multiple batteries to extend the battery life of the camera, and adds a vertical grip with an extra shutter release (and other contro ...

is occasionally referred to as a motor drive as it tends to increase the frame rate.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Motor Drive Camera features

See also

References