A medium-format film camera on a tripod in a white room, a grey-scale chart and three cards beyond it

GlassMeter · Camera School

Camera School

Camera School runs on a laptop or desktop — it draws the camera in 3D, every part working. Send yourself the link and open it there.

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GlassMeter · Camera School

Camera School

Learn a medium-format film camera by working it.

Pick a lesson

18:36

Portra 400

Drag to aim · click to spot-meter · double-click to focus

DoF — — EV —

About this page

Learn the camera by working it.

This camera was made in 1988 without a light meter, and it is all clockwork: a crank, a mirror, a leaf shutter in every lens, a film magazine that comes off mid-roll — and interlocks that stop you ruining a frame. Here you learn it the way you would at a camera shop's counter: hands on, a few things at a time. GlassMeter, on the phone beside it, is the meter it never had.

How it works

The lessons are short and done on the camera itself: you press the release, turn the crank, push in the dark slide, take the lens off. The camera refuses what the real one refuses, and tells you why.
Explore: point at any part to name it, click it to read what it does. Take the camera apart (E), or see inside it.
The mechanism follows the camera's and the lenses' manuals: the firing cycle, the winding, the dark-slide and lens interlocks, the signal windows, the A12 magazine.

Keys

F release · M meter · G show or hide the phone · L next lens
[ ] aperture · − = shutter speed · , . focus · arrows aim
W open the hood · D look in · Z loupe · X preview depth · H tripod head · E take apart
C lessons · N sound · ? this panel · Esc close

Credits

The camera is modelled from the original service manual's drawings and the lens datasheets; it carries a Glass Works nameplate and is not affiliated with the original maker. Built with three.js.

Grinding the glass…

Setting up the room — a few seconds the first time.