How does a cinema camera work?

A spinning shutter that is dark half the time, glass filters that throw away nine stops of sunlight, and a crew member whose whole job is turning one focus wheel. A cinema camera is a plain body holding a sensor behind a heavy prime lens on a PL mount.

Read how it works: How does a cinema camera work? · The history of the cinema camera · More boxes on Glassbox

Chapters in this interactive model

1. Inside a cinema camera rig: A sensor in a box, a heavy lens, and a lot of helpers bolted on.
2. 24 frames a second, half of each one dark: Frame rate sets how time is sampled. Shutter angle sets the blur in each frame.
3. Big sensors, long lenses, thin slices of focus: What the lens and sensor size decide: how much you see and how much is sharp.
4. Keep the shutter, cut the light: ND filters, EI, log recording and the scopes that check them.
5. Pan, dolly, crane, float, fly: Every support makes a different move, and every move feels different on screen.
6. Terabytes a day: the digital pipeline: What happens to the pictures between the sensor and the editor.