Definitions for "View Camera"
Keywords:  bellows, monorail, camera, tight, plane
Large format camera, which has a ground glass screen at the image plane for viewing and focusing. (see Baseboard, Field camera, Large format , Focusing screen, Monorail & Technical)
A large camera, so-called for the ground-glass viewing screen located on the same plane as the film. This screen, which receives light directly from the picture-taking lens, reveals precisely what the film will record. The typical view camera has four basic structural parts: a bed, the support on which the other parts rest and move, historically a dual track framework although most modern view cameras are monorail; the front, which has various mechanisms that support and allow adjustments to the lens; the back, which has the same freedom of movement as the front but incorporates a ground-glass viewing screen that moves out as a unit to accept a film holder and hold it in place; and the bellows, made of pleated leather or rubber-coated canvas, which provides a light-tight connection between front and back. Instead of bellows, some early view cameras were simply two boxes that could slide into one another.
the "first principles" kind of camera, being a light tight box than can take a lens at the front and a sheet of film (typically 4"x5" or larger) at the back; flexible beyond most people's photographic nightmares (e.g., the film and the lens plane are not parallel by construction, but adjustable).