Jargon-ikoo

Want to learn the technical terms? Here is Cuchi's Jargon-ikoo of Photography. 

NOTE: This is not a complete list. I will try my best to make a list of all technical terms used in photography. For the time being, here is what we have.

CAMERA TECHNICAL TERMS

APERTURE

controls the amount of light passing through the sensor of the camera; measured by f-stops; affects the depth of field of the photograph (blurry background, full focused photograph)

ISO

also known as International Organization for Standardization. This is the rating for the speed of the film/light sensor (for digital users). It also affects the sensitivity of the sensor. The numbers are standardized per camera which means at a certain ISO number like for example ISO 400, at any camera the same exposure is given. Alter this to increase/decrease sensitivity of light to catch pixels and also to capture in low light images.

SHUTTER SPEED

is the amount of time light is allowed to be exposed to the image sensor of the camera. Faster shutter speed freezes motion and a slower shutter speed is used to blur movement and capture images in low light

WHITE BALANCE (WB)

this is a setting in the camera that allows the photographer to adjust colour temperature to achieve the correct tones for the images he is aiming for. Most of the time, White Balance is altered in order to create a natural tone in the image. This is affected by the type and colour of light source in the shooting environment. (When shooting in RAW format, WB is easily adjusted during post processing without any image degradation)

 
EXPOSURE

This is the tone of the image taken from your camera. To get the best exposure out of your images, make use of the shadows and highlights to get a balanced exposure. Be warned about getting pictures under the sun because images tend to get overexposed. Always review your images in the camera. 

FOCAL LENGTHS

WIDE-ANGLE

This focal length is used if you want to capture an image with a wider angle. This is mostly used for landscape photos, because usually in this images, the photographer would like to capture the whole scenery e.g. 18mm


TELEPHOTO

This focal length is used to capture a magnified view of a certain object. This is usually used for zooming out insects, flowers etc... e.g. 200mm
 

 FILE FORMATS

 

JPEG

most common format used in digital cameras. these are compressed images used to produced small file sizes for easy management. 

RAW

image format available for high-end point and shoot cameras and DSLR's. image is recorded without any compression or alteration. This is mainly used for post processing of photographs.