What is SLR or DSLR?

Honestly speaking, I didn't really know what SLR means when I was buying mine (a few weeks ago)! All I know the pros are using it, beautiful pictures come out from it and most important of all - I WANT IT! =D

So... What does SLR/DSLR means?

This is going to be short and simple. A SLR camera simply means Single Lens Reflex camera. DSLR is the same but digital. For this, you don't actually need to know the technical details in order to use the camera, but I will explain what I learnt. =)

Diagram makes things easy!!

A Point & Shoot camera

A typical Point & Shoot camera have a seperate window for the viewfinder. This means when you are aiming for a shot through the viewfinder, you are seeing the viewfinder image (green). While the actual photo taken is what the lens is aiming, the lens image (blue). There is a slight shifted error between what you see and the actual image taken. This error exists when you are aiming too close to your subject and it is technically known as parallax error. But digital camera nowadays comes with LCD display that allows live view. You don't get that error as the images displayed on the LCD are coming directly Through The Lens (TTL).

A SLR camera

In a SLR camera, image (light) coming in from the lens is reflected with a flip-up mirror (green) then a prism device (blue). That's what you see in the viewfinder and it's the image coming from the lens, also almost exactly the same as the picture produced. As you release the shutter to take a picture, the mirror flips up and the image goes directly to back of the camera on the sensor (e.g. film). That's the reason why you experience blackout through the viewfinder on a SLR camera while a picture is taken. Oh and I think that's very good because it always reminds me to remove the lens cover before shooting! Haha!

This concludes here. =)