If the COVID-19 lockdown has made you stay back home from your school, work and other daily routine, lets focus on being photo productive and on your hobby that you seldom find time for. In this one, I’m going to talk to you about the photography terminology that will help you refresh some forgotten terms and add some new terms to your photography vocab making you photo productive. These photography jargons are mostly used in the millions of tutorials created worldwide. This blog is most useful for beginners and also for those who would like to refresh the photography lingo. I hope this blog makes you photo productive & compels you pick up your camera with higher enthusiasm. The terms used and described in this blog will help you thoroughly understand the tutorials and photography books that you pick up next. Let’s start with Photography Vocabulary.
Photography – Here is the real thing, the ART of capturing and processing photographs. Literally Photo-graph means, painting with light.
DSLR – Digital version of Single Lens Reflex cameras. It has a detachable and changeable lens
Exposure – The total amount of light received by the sensor with the current settings of Shutter Speed, Aperture and ISO. Over Exposed Photograph is an overly bright image, Under Exposed Photograph is unacceptably dark image
Shutter Speed – Literally the speed at which the shutter opens and closes for the light to pass through. Fast shutter speed (1/4000) results in darker photographs, slow shutter speed (1’) results in brighter photographs.
BULB / Shutter Drag – Bulb is a mode on camera that allows the photographer to keep the shutter open for as long as the shutter button (click) is pressed. This is also referred to as Shutter Drag
Aperture – The opening in the lens through which light enters the camera and hits the sensor. Bigger aperture (F1.8) opening results in brighter photographs, smaller aperture opening (F22) results in darker photographs.
ISO – The digital sensor’s sensitivity towards light. More the value (ISO 1600) results in brighter photographs, less the value (ISO 100) results in darker photographs.
Noise / Grains – The grainy and patchy look that appears in photos when shooting in low light conditions at higher ISO values
Exposure Triangle – The correlation between Shutter Speed, Aperture and ISO is commonly referred to as Exposure Triangle. Changing any one of these settings affects the rest two and in turn affects the overall exposure of the photograph.
Exposure Compensation – This concept works in Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority and P mode, where the camera adjusts the exposure on its own. If this is not the most optimum for the photographer then Exposure Compensation can be used to tweak the setting for better results
RAW – An unprocessed, uncompressed and lossless file format produced by the camera that is flat and unprocessed without any color profiles. Best suited for professional use and requires editing capabilities
JPEG – The most common but lossy and camera processed file format that already has color profile associated with it
AV / Aperture Priority – Mode on camera where a photographer can set the required Aperture value and camera adjusts the exposure to optimally suit the conditions
TV / Shutter Priority – Mode on camera where a photographer can set the required Shutter Speed value and camera adjusts the exposure to optimally suit the conditions
Manual – The real thing, where the photographer gets control of the entire Exposure Triangle to produce the desired exposure
Full Stop – Full Stops are the numbers of Shutter Speed, Aperture and ISO Scale that result in doubling or halving the overall exposure. E.g. Going from Shutter speed of 1/60 to 1/30 results in double exposure, thus this is Full Stop increase using Shutter Speed. Similarly, going from 1/100 to 1/200 results in half exposure, thus this is Full Stop decrease using shutter speed.
Bracketing – Clicking a set of photographs that is one stop higher and one stop lower in overall exposure from an averagely exposed one
Dynamic Range – It is explained by the total tonal range that a camera can render in and image. More dynamic range means a photograph shows shadows having details and at the same time highlights are not overblown
HDR – A photograph resulting from a merger of several bracketed photographs that results in High Dynamic Range and shows wide range of details from shadows and highlights. Preferred for landscape photographs
SOOC – Straight Out Of Camera, an image that is print ready as soon as it is out of the camera without further processing
AF-S / AF-C – Auto Focus Single – Only auto focuses for next one photograph Auto Focus Continuous – Auto Focuses for all the next shots
Picture Styles – A setting in cameras that allows you to modify Contrast, Sharpness, Color Tones, etc. E.g. Vivid, Monochrome, Landscape, Portrait
OVF / EVF – OVF is an Optical View Finder, where you see directly from the lens EVF is an Electronic View Finder, where the feed that you see is digital and may produce lag, this is equivalent to Live View
DoF – Shallow / Deep – Depth of Field is how much of your photograph is in acceptable sharp focus. Shallow DoF is very tiny part of your photo is in focus – ideal for Portraits Deep DoF is very big part of your photo is in focus – ideal for landscapes
Crop Factor – This is a ratio of camera’s sensor size to the 35mm film equivalent. This also has impact on resulting focal length. Full Frame Cameras have crop factor 1.0x Canon APS-C has crop factor of 1.6x and Nikon APS-C has crop factor of 1.5x / 1.4x in some models
Drive Mode – How do you want the photographs to be taken is referred to as Drive Modes E.g. Single Shooting / Continuous Shooting / 2 Sec. Timer / 10 Sec Timer
Metering – A mechanism in the camera that calculates the incoming amount of light based on the current Shutter Speed, Aperture and ISO settings.
Optical / Digital Zoom – Zoom / magnification achieved using lens is Optical Zoom, on the other hand magnification resulting due to cropping in software is Digital Zoom
Fast Lens – A lens having a wide opening aperture is referred to as Fast Lens because it’s wide aperture gains more light and allows the photographer to use faster shutter speeds compared to the other narrow aperture lenses in same light situation.
EXIF Data – All the data related to the image like – camera model, lens, focal length it was taken on, file size, resolution, date it was clicked on, and so on
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