This blog is a long time coming. If I was ultra-organized I would have posted it months ago when I first started contributing to the Photography Blog.
Better late than never, I suppose.
The following list contains the most commonly used digital photography terms. While it doesn’t include every single word or term used in the field, it does provide enough information to help you navigate your way through a camera manual and it will allow you to meet with a camera salesperson without wondering if he or she is speaking English.
Aperture—-The opening behind the camera’s lens that permits light to travel inside to where the sensor is located.
Digital zoom–The process of digitally enlarging a portion of an image. It is performed by the camera and doesn’t require you to physically adjust the camera’s lens.
JPEG—-Or Joint Photo Experts Group. It’s a term used to describe a type of digital compression used for digital images. This particular compression ratio was fixed by the Joint Photo Experts Group to reduce the picture size.
Megapixels—-A measurement of digital photo quality. Or the manufacturers way of describing the resolution of a digital camera. A one-megapixel image is made up of one million pixels.
6-megapixel camera–A camera capable of shooting an image containing six million pixels.
Pixels–Short for picture element. It is the smallest element of a digital image. Basically, made of a single “dot” of light or ink.
Pixel Count–The number of pixels featured in a picture. The higher the pixel count the clearer your image.
PPI–An acronym for “pixels per inch.” It is used to describe an element in picture quality. The higher the number of pixels displayed per inch, the sharper the picture will appear to the human eye.
RAW/NEF–The uncompressed image as shot by a digital camera. Canon introduced the RAW picture format, while Nikon calls this format NEF. Not a ‘standard’ file format like TIFF or JPEG. Usually the camera’s software or ‘plug-in’ must be used to open a RAW image file.
Sensor–The mechanism within a camera that converts incoming light into an electrical signal. It performs the role of “re-useable negative” within a digital camera.
Shutter Speed–The time in which the shutter stays open to light. Longer shutter speeds leave the aperture open longer, letting more light in and resulting in more exposure.
TIFF–An acronym for “Tagged Image File Format.” While there is no loss of information in this format, the resulting file size is quite large.
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