In several respects the mode of operation of the two types is the same. The unexposed plates are held in a magazine lying above the camera, in the axis of the lens (Fig. 32). After exposure the bottom plate is carried to one side and allowed to fall by the action of gravity into the receiving magazine. In the C type (Fig. 45) an opaque slide is drawn between the lens and the (variable-opening) shutter during the setting operation. During the exposure period this slide projects into a compartment on the opposite side of the camera from the receiving magazine, thus making the camera mechanism three plates wide. In the E type (Fig. 46), a flap over the lens makes it possible to dispense with the sliding screen, and reduces the camera to about the width of two plates. In the C type the plates are changed by a handle on top of the camera; in the E type provision is made for distance control by cords, and for shutter release by a Bowden wire. In both cameras the operation of plate changing also sets the shutter, a definite advance over the two preparatory motions in the French apparatus. The C type was constructed of wood, the E of metal. [Illustration: FIG. 47.—Italian (Piserini and Mondini) two compartment magazine hand-operated camera.] _Italian two-compartment magazine camera._ A camera designed by Piserini and Mondini was used to some extent by the Italian service toward the close of the war (Fig. 47). This has the desirable feature just noted in the C and E cameras: the operations of plate changing and shutter setting are performed in a single motion. Unlike those cameras, however, the plates are changed from one compartment to another of the magazine already described, without dependence on gravity, by an entirely positive shifting action. The setting of the self-capping focal-plane shutter is accomplished by a projecting finger engaging the shutter mechanism. Cameras of this general type, built for 18 by 24 centimeter plates, with interchangeable lens cones, removable shutters, and preferably magazines in which the center of gravity does not shift as the plates are changed, represent the next step in advance of the French practice, and may indeed prove all that is necessary or desirable in camera complexity for peace-time photography from the air.