The movie camera, film camera or cine-camera is a type of photographic camera which takes a rapid sequence of photographs on strips of film. The video camera has largely replaced it for private use, but for professional purposes, movie cameras are used and produced today, especially for the production of full-feature movies. In contrast to a still camera, which captures a single snapshot at a time, the movie camera takes a series of images; each image constitutes a “frame”.

This is accomplished through an intermittent mechanism. The frames are later played back in a movie projector at a specific speed, called the frame rate (number of frames per second). While viewing, a person’s eyes and brain merge the separate pictures together to create the illusion of motion.