Photography definitions

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My business is full of photography definitions, technical language and industry jargon that is often shrouded in slang, codes, and even signs. Between my Macintosh, Apple OS, Adobe Software, and the Internet, you practically need a photography dictionary as a reference.

Thus, I would like to give you some photography definitions and terms that will help you better understand the terminology of my trade.

Aperture – Your lens collects light, and the function of aperture is the physical size of the hole through which the light passes to reach the sensor. Aperture is expressed using F/stop values. The larger the diameter of the aperture, the more light reaches the image sensor. A higher f/ number, f/22 for example, will make foreground/background in focus. A lower f/number, f/4 (larger hole) will blur the background and focus of the foreground

Color Balance – In photography, color balance is the adjustment of the intensities of three colors – red, green, and blue. The goal is to get the gray balance. This is also defined as the neutral or white balance. I prefer this last term. For example, If I am shooting a specific image, I shoot first with my small mini three gray scale from Munsell Color. It helps me to find the perfect white when I edit this image using Photoshop.

Photography definitions: Depth of Field – This set up is allowing how much of the image is in focus. Deep depths of field (f/22 for example) will generally allow everything to be in focus while a shallow depth of field (f/4) will only have smaller portions in focus. I found a nice website which helps to calculate depth of field: www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

DNG – you have to know RAW is the properties of the camera manufactorer, it’s NEF for Nikon, RAF for fuji and CRW for Canon. so Adobe created this enw format to to respond to this monope of RAW format. DNG is a digital negative and you save your files from RAW to DNG, you are ensure that you wil be able to access to your future files. DNG use lossless compression, friles are reduced by 10/40 percent than RAW files, with DNG, your metadata are written direclty into the file, no more extra file as xmp.

Exposure – It’s the total of light that is allowed to get into your sensor during a shooting. This means that you can make your image look brighter (increased exposure) or darker (decreased exposure). With my Canon 5D, I can set the exposure up to +/-2 stops in 1/3 –stop increments. I am experimenting a lot with this function for my HDR photos, as I am usually taking five photos with five different exposures.

 

Focal Length – The focal length of the lens is defined as the distance from the middle of the lens to the focal point. In the market, there are four categories: normal, wide-angle, telephoto, and zoom. We say normal because these lenses cover 24 x 36 mm. This is approximately equivalent to our vision. Anything less than 50/55 mm is normal.

ISO: Photography definitions wouldn’t be complete without the mention of digital photography. ISO measures the sensitivity of the image sensor on a digital camera. It’s comparable to the film that we used before digital cameras were used. The lower number (50 for example) you set up, the less sensitive your camera will be to light. For outside, I always use 50/100 ISO. And, I increase my ISO to around 300/400 for darker situations and also for when I’m shooting sports because I need faster shutter speeds to freeze the action.

Photography definitions: Overexposure – It’s when a photograph receives too much light. The result is a white-looking image. It means in Photoshop that there aren’t any pixels. Even in RAW, white is “zero”. You have to always check your color balance and exposure to avoid overexposure.

RAW – It’s a format (Nikon calls it NEF) that contains the most information possible from a camera’s sensor. RAW data is unprocessed. I shoot my images in RAW format. Shooting in RAW allows me a larger range of flexibility after the shot is taken. It’s almost like an underdeveloped negative.

Sharpness – It describes the clarity of detail in your photo in terms of focus and contrast. It depends on the resolution of your image (and your camera), and the value of the ISO. My first piece of advice to get the sharpest photo is to invest in a good tripod. I have the Manfrotto from Bogen with a bullhead.

Shutter Speed – The shutter speed is the actual time that the shutter is open to allow light to hit the sensor. Shutter speed is usually measured in seconds. The smaller the number is, the shorter the shutter will be open. Longer shutter speeds are used for low light conditions such as shooting at night. It can also give the effect of fast motion making objects appear blurry. For example, for my kite surfing photos, I like to be between 1/500 and 1/1000.

Vignette Mask – It’s the dark of the corners of the images. It derives from the lens hoods and filters that reduce the lens angles of the view.

 

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