In photography, a view-finder is what the snapper looks through to compose, and in several cases to focus, the picture. Most viewfinders are separate, and suffer parallax, while the more complicated single-lens reflex camera lets the rangefinder use the primary optical system. Rangefinders are employed in many cameras of differing sorts: still and flick, film, digital and analog.

In photography the shutter-release button is a button found on many cameras, used to take a picture. When pushed, the shutter of the camera is "released", so it opens to capture a picture, and then closes, permitting an exposure time as determined by the shutter speed setting. Some cameras also utilise an electronic shutter, instead of a mechanical shutter.

A photographic lens is an assembly of lenses or optical lens used with a camera body and mechanism to make pictures of objects either on photographic film or on other media capable of storing an image chemically or electronically. While in theory a simple convex lens will suffice, in practice a compound lens made of several optical lens elements is needed to correct (as much as is possible) the many optical aberrations that crop up.

A mode dial or camera dial is a dial used on electronic cameras to modify the camera's mode. Most digicams, including DSLR and SLR-like cameras, support modes, selectable either by a dial or from a menu. On point-and-shoot cameras which support modes a variety of scene types is offered. On DSLR cameras and SLR-like cameras, mode dials typically offer access to manual settings.