Modern digital cameras can shoot remarkably quickly, but as impressive as they are, they have less machinery to move around than film cameras. This fun video shows the incredible mechanics behind an old 16mm film camera at 1,000 fps, allowing you to see how it all came together to produce watchable footage.
Coming to you from The Slow Mo Guys, this neat video shows how a 16mm film camera works using slow motion running at 1,000 fps. As incredibly fast as modern cameras have become, I have still always found fast film cameras more impressive, simply because they have way more mechanical movement required to reach those fast speeds. My old EOS 1V chewed through an entire roll of frame in a mind-boggling 3.6 seconds (racking up those film and processing costs eye-wateringly quickly), equating to 10 fps that it was pulling film through the camera, adjusting the aperture, exposing the film, and moving on to the next frame. There are certainly faster digital cameras out there, but it is hard to overstate how neat it is to hear a fast film camera firing off frames at a breakneck pace. Check out the video above to see all the machinery at work.
In a USAF tech school in the mid-1960s I received some short training using high-speed film cameras (18,000 fps). Sure makes a mess when you don't get the film properly inserted.
I absolutely love The Slow Mo Guys.
Can't believe I didn't know how that worked until now.
Although the principle is the same, not all film camaras work the same way. Pretty fascinating though.