Digital photography glossary
Non-technical explanation of common digital photography terms
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100 percent crop - a section of a digital image that is cropped before it is reduced in size or edited. Since images are large, a 100% crop lets others see the quality of an image at full resolution without displaying the entire image.
Barrel distortion: Image distortion produced when the position of the camera lens is at its widest angle. Lines you expect to appear perpendicular are not. It is most noticeable when you have a straight edge near the side of the frame, such as when taking a wide angle shot of a building. Barrel distortion causes the edges of an image to look curved or at a skewed angle. Most barrel distortion can be corrected using image editing software.
Bracketing: Take several shots of the same scene at different exposure settings to help ensure getting at least one well-exposed photo; bracket in difficult lighting situations. Some digital cameras have automatic bracketing (see exposure compensation).
Camera shake: Caused by even a slight movement of the camera as it records an image. Camera shake is the main cause of blurred images.
Compact digital camera: a digital camera that does not take interchangeable lenses (though some take converter lenses). Compact digital cameras range from simple point-and-shoot to ones with advanced settings and manual and semi-automatic control.
Continuous mode (Burst mode): A camera mode that lets you take multiple photos in rapid sequence as you hold the shutter release button down. It is used to capture a series of images or to photograph a fast or unpredictably moving subject.
Converter lens: a lens that attaches to the front of a digital camera, usually requiring an adapter so it mounts correctly on the front of the camera.
Depth-of-field (DOF): Refers to how much of a photo is in focus when the camera is focused on the main subject. Depth-of-field is controlled by a camera's aperture, in conjunction with the focal length of the lens. Deep (more) depth-of-field means that all or most of the picture is in focus from front to back. Shallow (less) depth-of-field means that a subject is in focus but objects in front and behind it appear out of focus.
Digital zoom: A simulated zoom. The physical length of the lens does not change. The camera pre-crops the central portion of an image and reduces its resolution giving an appearance of zooming in. Image quality is degraded and contains increased noise (see optical zoom).
EXIF: Exchangeable Image File - Data that is stored in jpeg and TIFF image files, such as shutter speed, date and time, focal length, exposure compensation, metering pattern and if a flash was used a the time a photo was taken. EXIF data can be read by applications which support JPEG including web browsers, image editing programs and some printer software drivers.
Exposure compensation: Increase or decrease the exposure an image from the exposure automatically selected by a camera metering system (see bracketing).
Exposure meter: Built-in digital camera meter that measures the amount of light when framing a photo and determines the best exposure. Matrix (Evaluative), Spot and Center-weighted are the main metering types; some digital cameras have all three.
Exposure values (EV): Exposure Values are numbers that refer to various combinations of lens aperture and shutter speed. When bracketing a photo, decrease the EV if a scene will appear too light (over-exposed). Increase the value if a scene will look too dark (under-exposed).
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