Camera: A camera is a device that records and stores images. These images may be still photographs or moving images such as videos or movies.

Lens: the light-gathering device of a camera, typically containing a group of compound lenses.

Compound Lens: Simple lenses are subject to the optical aberrations (-do not form perfect images; there is always some degree of distortion or aberration introduced by the lens which causes the image to be an imperfect replica of the object.). In many cases these aberrations can be compensated for to a great extent by using a combination of simple lenses with complementary aberrations. A compound lens is a collection of simple lenses of different shapes and made of materials of different refractive indices, arranged one after the other with a common axis.

CCD: Charged-Coupled Device; The digital equivalent of film; the imaging sensor that coverts the light passing through a lens into an electronic equivalent of the original image.

Single-Lens Reflex camera (SLR) [Digital Single-Lens Reflex camera (DSLR)]A single-lens reflex (SLR) camera is a camera that typically uses a semi-automatic moving mirror system (hence the name "reflex", from the mirror's reflection) that permits the photographer to see exactly what will be captured by the film or digital imaging system, as opposed to pre-SLR cameras where the view through the viewfinder could be significantly different from what was captured on film.

Viewfinder: what the photographer looks through to compose, and in many cases to focus, the picture; On a digital camera this can be an LCD screen that displays the an electronic view of the image. It can also be used for reviewing images and all menu data.

Liquid Crystal Display (LCD): A panel on a digital camera that also for image preview and use as a viewfinder

Exposure: the action of exposing a photographic film to light or other radiation. Exposure determines how light or dark an image is and what mood it conveys. (Less light makes an image darker and more light makes it lighter; This can be achieved in multiple ways: ISO/ASA (higher or lower rating); shutter speed (longer or shorter exposure); aperture (larger or smaller aperture opening) Aperture & shutter speed both affect the total amount of light that reaches the film or the sensor)

Shutter: Mechanical device that regulates the time that light is allowed into the camera.

Shutter Lag: The time delay between pressing the shutter release and the exposure being made. The length of this delay was a major problem of early digital cameras, and is still an issue today with many cameras.

PHOTOGRAPHY & DIGITAL IMAGING VOCABULARY:

Shutter Speed: The speed at which the shutter moves resulting in length of time that the shutter stays open for (Standard times are 1/1000, 1/500, 1/250, 1/125, 1/60, 1/30…. of a second.) The shutter opens to begin an exposure and closes to end it. The shutter speed setting determines how long the shutter opens to expose the image sensor.Aperture: The aperture is the hole through which light enters the camera. The size of the hole can be changed to control the brightness of the light that reaches the image sensor. (The opening between the lens and the shutter that controls the amount of light falling on the CCD sensor.) (Apertures are referred to as F-stops, f2.8 - f32 is a standard range for a lens) (Each f-stop lets in half as much light as the next larger opening and twice as much light as the next smaller opening. From the largest possible opening to increasingly smaller ones, the f-stops have traditionally been those shown to the left.)

*Aperture affects depth, shutter speed affects motion*

Depth of Field: Zone from point nearest camera to point farthest that is acceptably in focus

Reciprocity: the relationship between aperture and shutter speed. As you alter the aperture or shutter speed the other is automatically adjusted to maintain the correct exposure.

ISO: International Standards Organization, a system rating the sensitivity of light on film.In Digital Photography ISO measures the sensitivity of the image sensor. The same principles apply as in film photography – the lower the number the less sensitive your camera is to light and the finer the grain. Higher ISO settings are generally used in darker situations to get faster shutter speeds (for example an indoor sports event when you want to freeze the action in lower light) – however the cost is noisier shots.

ASA: American Standards Association, a higher number ASA rating represents faster film and an increased sensitivity to light. These measures have been transferred across from film-based photography and refer to comparable levels of sensitivity to light settings in digital photography. Your camera may use ISO or ASA; they are relatively interchangeable.

Grain: the clumping of silver in the negative that gives the image a "sandy" or "speckled" appearance. Films with low ISO numbers will have less clumping and therefore finer grain; aka: granular appearance of a photograph or negative, which is in proportion to the size of the emulsion particles composing it. NOISE- any undesirable flecks of random color in a portion of an image that should consist of smooth color. Noise is disturbances that appear as “grain” in digital image files. Digital noise is caused by high ISO used to compensate fro low-light conditions. Noise increases as ISO increases.

Rule of Thirds: A concept borrowed from ancient Greeks, where by a photograph can be balanced asymmetrically by dividing it into three parts both vertically and horizontally. The center of interest must appear at an intersection of one of the dividing lines. The basic principle behind the rule of thirds is to imagine breaking an image down into thirds (both horizontally and vertically) so that you have 9 parts. Thus, Rule of thirds’ now identifies four important parts of the image that you should consider placing points of interest in as you frame your image.

Visual Hot Spots: by using the Rule of Thirds, the photograph is divided into 3 parts vertically and horizontally. Visual hotspots are the points where the lines intersect and where the center of interest should be.

Golden Section: a specifically proportioned rectangle that is “aesthetically perfect.” The LCD monitor, film sizes, and digital ccd sensors either roughly or precisely correspond to the dimensions of the Golden Section.

Focus: The point at which the light rays converge on the CCD or film to create the sharpest image possible. Due to the optical properties of photographic lenses, only objects within a limited range of distances from the camera will be reproduced clearly. The process of adjusting this range is known as changing the camera's focus. There are various ways of focusing a camera accurately. Single-lens reflex cameras allow the photographer to determine the focus and composition visually using the objective lens and a moving mirror to project the image onto a ground glass or plastic micro-prism screen. Modern cameras often offer autofocus systems to focus the camera automatically by a variety of methods

Auto-focus: The camera’s auto-focusing system; An autofocus (or AF) optical system uses a sensor, a control system, and a motor to focus fully automatic or on a manually selected point or area.

Sharpness: distinct in outline or detail; clearly defined. Controlling sharpness in your images is based on the following:

Focus. If none of your image is sharp, or if your main subject is not sharp but other parts of the photograph are, your camera was improperly focused.

Depth of Field . If your central subject is sharp but the background or foreground is less so, you didn't have enough depth of field.

Camera Movement. If the image is blurred all over, with no part sharp, the camera moved during the exposure. Some points appear as lines, and edges are blurred.

Subject Movement. When some of the picture is sharp but a moving subject appears blurred, your shutter speed was too slow.

Center of Interest: The most prominent shape, object, or subject in a photo.

Burning: While developing in a darkroom or editing in Photoshop, this process lets more light reach the enlarging paper (or pixels), so as to darken selected parts of a print or image.

Dodging: While developing in a darkroom or editing in Photoshop, this process holds back light from selected dark areas of the print (or of pixels) to keep detail.

Crop: Eliminating portions of a photo to improve its composition and make it proportional to layout space.

Deadspace: Empty areas on either side of a centered subject. Any nonessential area in a photograph.

Formal Balance: The center of interest is usually centered in the photo. If you were to fold the photo in half, there would be approximately the same visual weight on each side.

Informal Balance: Using the concept of the Rule of Thirds, the photograph is divided into thirds both vertically and horizontally. The center of interest should fall on one of the points of interest.

Framing: they surround or “frame” your center of interest. This is an easy way to draw attention to your center of interest and narrow down the area of your subject.

Contrast: the degree of difference between tones in an image Hard Contrast: A high contrast in a negative or print- too much black, too much white, not enough

gray middle tones. Soft Contrast: A very low contrast in a negative or print; lack of blacks and whites

Grayscale: The scale of gray tones ranging from white to black

The Zone system: a photographic technique for determining optimal film exposure and development; a way to determine proper exposure and adjust the contrast of the final print; provides photographers with a systematic method of precisely defining the relationship between the way they visualize the photographic subject and the final results

HDRI: In image processing, computer graphics, and photography, high dynamic range imaging (HDRI or just HDR) is a set of techniques that allow a greater dynamic range of luminance between the lightest and darkest areas of an image than current standard digital imaging techniques or photographic methods

Overexposed: Result of too much light reaching the film, caused by too wide an aperture or too slow a shutter speed; (In camera action)

Underexposed: Result of too little light permitted to reach film caused by too narrow an aperture or too fast a shutter speed; (In camera action)

Overdeveloped: A negative or print with too much contrast; a result of inaccurately developing your film, exposing or developing your paper in the darkroom, or over developing in Photoshop; (Occurs after the picture has been taken)

Underdeveloped: Lack of strong contrast in negatives or prints, caused by not enough time in developer, developer weak or too cold, OR lack of adjustments in Photoshop; (Occurs after the picture has been taken)

Bracketing: The process of taking a set range of exposures of the same image. This provides a choice of a set of a range of variable exposures; Generally you bracket in 3s: one under, one over, and one mid-exposure

Panning: The technique of moving the camera horizontally at the same apparent speed as a moving object. The resulting photograph will be one where the moving object appears ‘stopped’ or ‘frozen’ in action, while the background, which is stationary, is blurred.

Freeze Motion: Stop all motion within the frame by using a fast shutter speed

Selective Focus: The subject of your photograph is in focus, while everything around the subject is not.

Focal Length: the distance between the center of a lens or curved mirror and its focus within a compound lens; Standard/Normal lenses are 50mm, which resemble the view that the human eye has, creating a “natural view”

Telephoto lens: Lens with focal length longer than normal (~70-200mm or more) Makes distant images appear larger and closer. Telephoto lenses compress the view which can be both positive and negative depending on the situation; many times they must be used with a tripod because they are too heavy to handhold

Wide-Angle Lens: Lens with focal length less than normal. Makes images appear closer, especially in the middle

Macro Lens: True macro photography is at the scale of 1:1 or greater — this means that the object you’re photographing should be the same size or larger on the sensor. Most macro lenses have a focal length between 50mm and 200mm, and they usually have a large maximum aperture (low f-number) that gives them both the ability to be fast as well as totally isolate the subject. The background and shallow depth-of-field is a very important part of macro photography and can take quite a lot of time to master.

Image Stabilization (IS): A feature that certain cameras and telephoto lenses have that reduce camera shake and improve image focus

Lens Hood: In photography, a lens hood or lens shade is a device used on the end of a lens to block the sun or other light source in order to prevent glare and lens flare. The geometry of the lens hood can vary from a plain cylindrical or conical section (much like a lamp shade) to a more complex cut sometimes called a petal, tulip or flower hood (as shown in some of the pictures), which produce a reasonable good shade without blocking the field of view of the lens and thus producing vignetting. Properly petal shaped lens hoods produce more shade than normal lens hoods with the same end diameter. Square lens hoods may be even better.

Filter: An accessory lens placed over a camera lens. In camera digital filters can be used to modify color and tone after a photograph is captured. (Photoshop filter layers are a different matter)

Montage: Several photos Placed closed to each other to appear as onetechnique in film editing in which a series of short shots are edited into a sequence to condense space, time, and information. It is usually used to suggest the passage of time.

Collage: (From the French: coller, to glue); a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole; A collage may include newspaper clippings, ribbons, bits of colored or hand-made papers, portions of other artwork, photographs and other found objects, glued to a piece of paper or canvas; It can also be multiple digital files layered and combined in Photoshop

Vignette: halftone with a background gradually fading into the paper surrounding it; An image shaded off gradually at the edges so as to leave no definite line at the border; a reduction of an image's brightness or saturation at the periphery compared to the image center.

Silhouette: created by light coming from behind the subject, but not falling on the subject; A silhouette is the image of a person, an object or scene consisting of the outline and a featureless interior, with the silhouetted object usually being black. From its original graphic meaning, the term "silhouette" has been extended to describe the sight or representation of a person, object or scene that is backlit, and appears dark against a lighter background.

Backlighting: The effect of a picture taken with the light shining behind the subject facing the photographer. The subjects appear darker with less detail in the shadows. Backlighting refers to the process of illuminating the subject from the back. In other words, the lighting instrument and the viewer are facing towards each other, with the subject in between. This causes the edges of the subject to glow, while the other areas remain darker. The backlight can be a natural or artificial source of light.

Landscape Format: Terms used for a picture taken horizontally, oriented in a horizontal format. Also a print output layout

Portrait Format: Term used for a picture taken vertically. Also a print output layout

JPEG: Joint Photographic Experts Group, a data compression method that reduces file size and stores photographic images. This method increases image storage capacity but at the cost of a lose of information. Additionally, every time you open and then close a JPEG file it

RAW: A camera raw image file contains minimally processed data from the image sensor of a digital camera. Raw files are so named because they are not yet processed and therefore are not ready to be printed or edited with a bitmap graphics editor. Normally, the image is processed by a raw converter in a wide-gamut internal colorspace where precise adjustments can be made before conversion to a "positive" file format such as TIFF or JPEG for storage, printing, or further manipulation, which often encodes the image in a device-dependent colorspace.

TIFF: Tagged Image File Format, a file for storing images, especially photographs. Popular format for high color depth; usually the file format you want to print from

PSD: Photoshop Document; Photoshop Document (Photoshop proprietary format – must use Adobe Photoshop software); (Photoshop document), the default file extension of the proprietary file format of Adobe System's Photoshop program; stores an image with support for most imaging options available in Photoshop. These include layers with masks, color spaces, ICC profiles, transparency, text, alpha channels and spot colors, clipping paths, and duotone settings.

PNG: Portable Network Graphics is a bitmapped image format that employs lossless data compression. PNG was created to improve upon and replace GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) as an image-file format not requiring a patent license.

GIF: Graphic Interchange Format, a compressed file made for use on the web. The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) is a bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability.Supports up to 8 bits per pixel

PDF: Portable Document Format (PDF) is an open standard for document exchange. This file format created by Adobe Systems in 1993 is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. Each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a fixed-layout flat document, including the text, fonts, graphics, and other information needed to display

EXIF: Exchangeable Image File: the file format used by most digital cameras. For example, when a typical camera is set to record a JPEG, it's actually recording an EXIF file that uses JPEG compression to compress the photo data within the file.

Pixels: Picture Element, the smallest units of color information that can be displayed on a computer screen. Viewed Normally, pixels combine to In digital imaging, a pixel (picture element) is a single point in a raster image, or the smallest addressable screen element in a display device; it is the smallest unit of picture that can be represented or controlled. Each pixel has its own address. The address of a pixel corresponds to its coordinates. Pixels are normally arranged in a two-dimensional grid, and are often represented using dots or squares. Each pixel is a sample of an original image; more samples typically provide more accurate representations of the original. The intensity of each pixel is variable. In color image systems, a color is typically represented by three or four component intensities such as red, green, and blue, or cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.

Megapixel: One megapixel equals one million pixels. Also the rating for a digital camera’s resolution. A megapixel (MP or Mpx) is one million pixels, and is a term used not only for the number of pixels in an image, but to express the number of image sensor elements of digital cameras or the number of display elements of digital displays. For example, a camera with an array of 2048 × 1536 sensor elements is commonly said to have "3.1 megapixels" (2048 × 1536 = 3,145,728).

Proprietary: A proprietary format is a file format where the mode of presentation of its data is the intellectual property of an individual or organization which asserts ownership over the format. In contrast, a free format is a format that is either not recognized as intellectual property, or has had all claimants to its intellectual property release claims of ownership. Proprietary formats can be either open if they are published, or closed, if they are considered trade secrets. In contrast, a free format is never closed.

Lossy: Data Compression techniques that reduce some detail of a digital image are described as being “lossy.” Many digital photo compression techniques utilize lossy compression. [In general, a camera’s onboard computer tosses 20% of the data in an image before it is ever written to the memory card. –JPEGs do this.]

Non-lossy (Lossless): A term that refers to data compression techniques that do not remove image data details in order to achieve compression. This method takes up more memory space than loosy files, however it retains the entire original image.

RAM: Random Access Memory, a common type of computer that temporarily stores information. Digital editing software requires significantly more RAM than other computer applications like MS-Word.

PPI: Pixels per inch, a measurement of an image’s resolution

DPI: Dots per inch, is a measure of spatial printing or video dot density, in particular the number of individual dots that can be placed in a line within the span of 1 inch (2.54 cm). The DPI value tends to correlate with image resolution, but is related only indirectly.

Resolution: The number of visual dots per inch (dpi) or pixels per inch (ppi). The more pixels an image contains, the higher the resolution, and the better the image quality.

Red- Eye: An effect caused by light from a camera’s lens, making the pupils appear red in the photograph.

Saturation: Characteristic of color or the intensity of a hue; generally the more saturated the color an image is, the more intense an image will appear in relation to a neutral gray

CMYK: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black. the physical inks or equivalent screen based color mode. CMYK are the colors used in combination to print a digital image.

RGB: Red, Green, Blue. These additive primary colors combine to produce all visibile colors. Digital cameras handle all color information as shades of red, green, and blue. As RGB colors are combined they increase in brilliance.

Lab color: Represents color with 3 components: {Lightness, color value from red to green, color value from blue to yellow}. This is another non-standard color channel.

Ambient Light: The natural light in a scene.

Shadow: A shadow is an area where direct light from a light source cannot reach due to obstruction by an object. It occupies all of the space behind an opaque object with light in front of it. The cross section of a shadow is a two-dimensional silhouette, or reverse projection of the object blocking the light. The sun causes many objects to have shadows and at certain times of the day, when the sun is at certain heights, the length of shadows change.

White Balance: White balance (WB) is the process of removing unrealistic color casts, so that objects which appear white in person are rendered white in your photo. Proper camera white balance has to take into account the "color temperature" of a light source, which refers to the relative warmth or coolness of white light. White balance is a camera feature you can use to compensate color cast in an image created by ambient light. Auto white balance searches the image for a color imbalance and adjusts the image to appear as taken in neutral white light. BUT- but digital cameras often have great difficulty with auto white balance (AWB) — and can create unsightly blue, orange, or even green color casts.

Color Balance: In photography and image processing, color balance is the global adjustment of the intensities of the colors (typically red, green, and blue primary colors). An important goal of this adjustment is to render specific colors – particularly neutral colors – correctly; hence, the general method is sometimes called gray balance, neutral balance, or white balance. Color balance changes the overall mixture of colors in an image and is used for color correction; generalized versions of color balance are used to get colors other than neutrals to also appear correct or pleasing.

Flash: A flash is a device used in photography producing a flash of artificial light (typically 1/1000 to 1/200 of a second) at a color temperature of about 5500 K to help illuminate a scene. A major purpose of a flash is to illuminate a dark scene. Other uses are capturing quickly moving objects or changing the quality of light. Flash refers either to the flash of light itself or to the electronic flash unit discharging the light. Most current flash units are electronic, having evolved from single-use flashbulbs and flammable powders. Modern cameras often activate flash units automatically.

External flash: A supplementary flash unit that connects to the camera with a cable, or is triggered by the light from the camera's internal flash. Many fun and creative effects can be created with external flash.

Fill flash: A flash technique used to brighten deep shadow areas, typically outdoors on sunny days. Some digital cameras include a fill flash mode that forces the flash to fire, even in bright light.