A camera is an optical instrument used to record images. At their most basic, cameras are sealed boxes (the camera body) with a small hole (the aperture) that allow light in to capture an image on a light-sensitive surface (usually photographic film or a digital sensor). Cameras have various mechanisms to control how the light falls onto the light-sensitive surface. Lenses focus the light entering the camera, the size of the aperture can be widened or narrowed to let more or less light into the camera, and a shutter mechanism determines the amount of time the photo-sensitive surface is exposed to the light. The still image camera is the main instrument in the art of photography and captured images may be reproduced later as a part of the process of photography, digital imaging, photographic printing. The similar artistic fields in the moving image camera domain are film, videography, and cinematography.
