I was photographing details of cameras I'm working on selling (and others I'm not selling) on my new website UsedFilmCameras.com. The resulting photos reminded me- I doubt many people wouldn't know what the numbers, marks, and colors mean. So I thought it would be fun to start a little series explaining all that stuff means. So here goes: Here's a shutter dial from a lovely Nikon F3 given to me from my old friends John & Phuong (not for sale.) So the numbers in white are fractions of a second. That's one of the things that makes photography confusing! The red number "60" is the same as the white numbers..... except: 1/60th of a second is the shortest speed this camera can sync with flash. The orange numbers aren't fractions. They are whole numbers. If you meant to expose for 1/8th of a second and moved the dial to the orange 8 you'd ruin your exposure. Bulb is an old term that now means that the shutter remains open as long as
Discussion about cameras, lenses and photography in general.