Motor drive
The motor drive (international, English : motor drive or winder ) is a device for automatic film transport in a camera and thus replaces the manual transport lever .
functionality
Motor drives allow at least two modes of operation: series image and single image . With a series of pictures , the camera takes photos as long as the shutter release button is pressed. With special cameras, a film with 36 exposures can be used in under four seconds. However, normal motors "only" manage 3–5 frames per second. Motors that can "only" transport two images per second are also called winder . Fast motors then often offer a subdivision of the series image mode into different frame rates ( slow and fast ). With the mirror up, additional reserves can be extracted from some cameras in terms of the maximum frame rate.
In single-frame mode, the camera only advances the film one frame after it is taken, even if the shutter button is kept pressed. If the series picture mode is used by sports photographers, for example, the single picture mode is often used in portrait photography in order to always be able to take a so-called margin , which is often the better photo because the model looks more relaxed (and therefore more natural).
Since digital cameras don't need film, they don't have a motor drive either. Here, integrated motors are only used to cock the shutter, for the autofocus and zooming with the zoom rocker.
History and Development
The first motor in a 35mm camera was presented for the Leica in 1936 . It had a mechanical spring mechanism, so it got by without electricity. The first electric motor drive was introduced in 1957 for the Nikon S series ( rangefinder cameras ). That was the S-36 , which, as the F-36 for the Nikon F reflex camera, made it the professional camera of its time. It was this motor that prompted all other manufacturers to also build electric motors for their cameras. With the further development of electronics , the electric motor was later no longer controlled mechanically (by the shutter release ), but rather "knew" through the electronically controlled shutter mechanism when the earliest time it was allowed to continue transporting the film. Before that, when using longer shutter speeds , the photographer had to consider that the motor frequency would not conflict with the shutter mechanics and damage the camera's mechanics.
With the introduction of the autofocus single lens reflex cameras in the late 1980s (especially the Minolta 7000 ), the camera had a second motor for focusing the lens . If the motors were previously screwed onto the bottom of the camera as an accessory (via the tripod thread and a transport coupling ), they now moved into the camera housing as an integral part. These cameras then no longer had the option of manually transporting the film.