Photography Terminology You Should Know
Aspect Ratio, Dynamic Range, Focal Length! What does it all mean? As a beginner in photography, you will hear lots of Photography terminology that sounds like they’ve come straight from a sci-fi novel. Well, fear not my learner friends, here we bring you the A-Z of photography terminology.
Our free downloadable guide is here to help the beginner photographer learn easier by explaining all the photography terminology. From Aperture to Zoom Lens here you’ll get all the camera terms explained and what’s more, it’s totally free!
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A-Z of Photography Terminology
Camera terminology explained in the letter A
A / Av – aperture priority mode on cameras that have manual modes. You choose the aperture, the camera chooses the rest to give a correct exposure.
Aperture – the opening in a lens that lets light into the camera. Represented by an f number. Small apertures like f16 let in less light and wide apertures like f2.8 let in more light. Click here for our Apertures Explained video.
Aspect Ratio – the size of the image’s height in relation to its width, i.e. 16:9 means 16 equal parts along one edge to 9 equal parts along the other edge. Sometimes referred to as the crop of the image.
AF – auto-focusing - focusing modes in which the camera will automatically focus for you.
Photography terminology explained the letter B
Blue Hour – the short period before sunrise or after sunset when the sun is just below the horizon. This time of day creates a soft, blue, even light.
Bokeh Effect – The term for the circles or hexagons in out-of-focus areas of an image. Shown more prominently in shots that have a shallow depth of field. Click here to see how to create the Bokeh effect with ease.
Bracketing – the technique of taking multiple shots of the same thing at different exposures e.g. one too bright, one normal and one too dark. Bracketing can be done manually or by using the automatic exposure bracketing feature on some cameras.
Bulb – setting which allows you to open the shutter for as long as the shutter release button is pressed. This allows for exposure times longer than 30 seconds. A cable release or remote trigger can be used to lock the shutter open.
Burst rate – number of shots the camera can take consecutively in continuous shooting mode. Speed of this depends on the camera, file size of the images and the speed of your memory card.
Photography terminology explained in the letter C
Candid – a shot taken of someone who wasn’t expecting it or who wasn’t posing. Common in street or documentary photography.
Chromatic Aberration – the effect caused by the refraction of different wavelengths of light. Seen in an image via coloured lines (usually green or purple) on edges of objects such as rocks or buildings.
Composition – the word composition means combining or 'putting together’ parts to form a whole. In photography, composition is how you arrange the elements of your scene within your frame. You have rules of composition such as the rule of thirds. Click here to see a video on how to use composition to improve portraiture.
Contrast – the difference between the dark and light areas of an image. Higher contrast images have darker shadows and brighter highlights whereas low contrast images will have less definition between the lights and darks.
Crop factor – this is the size of a camera sensor proportionate to a 35mm sensor, sometimes called a full-frame sensor. The 35mm full frame sensor is based on the old 35mm film size. Crop sensors are a cropped version of this. Common crop sensors are APS-C and micro 4/3. The crop factor of your sensor is to do with the effect of the focal length equivalent on a full frame camera. E.g. an APS-C sensor has a crop factor of x1.6. This means if you multiply the focal length on a APS-C camera by 1.6 you will get the equivalent focal length on a full frame camera. For a more info on this click here for our ‘Sensor Sizes Explained’ video.
Photography terminology explained in the letter D
Depth of Field – the distance around your focus point (in front and behind) that is sharp. A long DOF will show everything sharp from the foreground to the background. A shallow DOF will show only a small part of the picture sharp with the foreground and background being blurry.
DSLR – Digital Single Lens Reflex Camera. Popular camera type for learners of photography and professionals. Lenses can be changed and the manual settings can easily be adjusted. Find out about the best beginner DSLRs here.
Dynamic Range – range of luminosity and colour depth in an image, between the highest and lowest intensities. An image with a higher dynamic range will have more detail in the lights, darks and colours.
DNG - stands for ‘Digital Negative’. This is a standard format for a Raw file and will work on all image manipulation programs that process Raw files. Click here to find out the what, why and should you convert to DNG.
Photography terminology explained in the letter E
Exposure – amount of light you expose your sensor or film to. Determined by the aperture and shutter speed.
Exposure Compensation – feature on most cameras that allows you to increase or decrease the exposure in manual modes.
Photography terminology explained in the letter F
Flash – a burst of light. This can come from a pop-up flash built-in to the camera, a flash gun, or flash lights in a studio. Check out our 5 Pro Portrait Lighting Setups tutorial here.
Flash Sync speeds – the shutter speed at which the camera must be set whilst using flash lighting. Not using this will cause banding in an image.
Focal length – distance in millimetres where light rays converge in your lens to form a sharp image, and the camera sensor. In short, it controls your field of view. A low number will give you a wide field of view and a high number will give you a narrow field of view. Focal length determines whether a lens is categorised as being wide angle, standard, or telephoto.
Focusing – the action where you focus your lens to get an area of your frame sharp.
Flat Lay - Flat Lay Photography is a photograph taken from directly above looking down on usually products or food. Click here for our Flat Lay Photography tutorial.
Photography terminology explained in the letter G
Gear – common term used to describe a photographer’s equipment.
Golden Hour – The short period of time (usually an hour) before sunset or after sunrise. It’s where the sun is low in the sky and light produced is a deep orange/red.
Photography terminology explained in the letter H
HDR (High Dynamic Range) – a technique using exposure bracketing and post-processing to create an image with a higher dynamic range. An image with a higher dynamic range will have more detail in the lights, darks and colours. Learn about HDR in Lightroom.
Histogram – visual representation of the colour and luminance of an image. The left side of a histogram represents the darks, the middle the mid-tones and the right side the highlights. Higher peaks represent more information in that part of the exposure. E.g. a tall right side of a histogram would indicate a lot of highlights in an image.
Photography terminology explained in the letter I
Image stabilisation – technology held in a camera lens or body that reduces camera shake caused by hand-holding the camera.
Image Quality – setting on most cameras that changes the amount of pixels you capture and whether the camera shoots in Jpeg or RAW.
Infinity (focusing) – the furthest point away that your lens can focus onto.
ISO – is the sensitivity your light sensor is to light. Displayed as ‘ISO 100’ or’ ISO 400’ etc. The lower the number (ISO 100) the less sensitive to light and the less noise the image will have. The higher the number (ISO 1600) the more noise the image will have but you can take pictures in much less light. ISO stands for - ‘International Organisation for Standardisation’.
Photography terminology explained in the letter J
Jpeg – The standard format for images. It’s a compressed, or flattened, image that can be viewed by most devices and printed. Because they are compressed, they contain less information and are smaller. Jpeg stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group.
Photography terminology explained in the letter K
Kelvin – is a colour temperature measurement informing the colour of light. E.g. Daylight is 5500OK (Kelvins) and this gives a pure white light whereas a sunset will be around 3200K which will give a warmer, orange light. Used mainly in the white balance settings of your camera.
Photography terminology explained in the letter L
Leading Lines – composition technique using lines to guide the viewer’s eye into a part of the scene. Learn how to use leading lines here.
Lightroom – image management and editing software by Adobe. Allows you to organise your photography into folders, make global edits, and perform batch actions. Check out our course on Lightroom.
Light drawing / Light painting – long exposure technique that causes light to trail into lines.
Light meter – device that measures the light in a scene to give the optimum exposure value. Cameras have in-built light meters, but in a studio, you use a hand-held light meter to gauge an exposure needed for a lighting set-up.
Long Exposure – technique using a long shutter speed allowing light to enter the camera over a longer period of time. This will cause any moving objects to blur whilst keeping still objects still. Generally achieved whilst using a tripod. Click here to learn more about long exposures.
Photography terminology explained in the letter M
Macro – extreme close-up photography, used to capture very small subjects or detail. Click here for some Macro photography ideas.
M or Manual Mode – mode that most DSLR and Mirrorless cameras have which allow for full control over all of the camera’s settings. Learn how to master your camera’s settings in our Beginner’s Course.
Megapixel – 1 million pixels
Metering Modes – modes in your camera which control how the light meter measures light.
Metadata – specific details of a picture hidden within the file. Details could including camera used, lens used, camera settings, copyright information etc. To get the metadata information of an image, right click on the file and select ‘Properties’ on a PC or ‘Get Info’ on a Mac. Learn how to add your copyright details to your metadata in our Lightroom course.
Photography terminology explained in the letter N
Noise – coloured dots mainly seen within a picture. Noise is seen more when using higher ISOs. It’s the digital version of what used to be called film grain.
Negative – before digital photography, pictures used to be captured on film. A negative shows the picture in negative i.e. blacks are seen as whites and whites are seen as blacks. A negative is then printed in a darkroom to create a positive image on print.
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Photography terminology explained in the letter O
Overexposed – When the picture is too bright. Too much light has entered the camera.
Photography terminology explained in the letter P
Program Mode – shown as P on a camera, it’s a mode which will give you a correct exposure to light but also allow you to change that exposure quickly should you wish to create a different visual effect.
Panning – a technique where the photographer moves the camera at the same speed as a moving subject whilst taking a picture. Used to create a sense of speed by freezing the moving subject whilst creating a blurred background.
Photoshop – Image editing software by Adobe. Very powerful image manipulation tool. Check out our full course on Photoshop here.
Pixel – Smallest part of a digital image. The more pixels you have in an image, the higher the resolution it has.
PPI – stands for pixels per inch. If an image has too little pixels per inch, the image becomes soft and is said to be pixelated. You need more pixels per inch for a print than you do for on screen.
Post-processing – the process of making adjustments to an image after taking it. Film pictures were processed in a darkroom, whereas modern-day images can be processed in programs such as Lightroom and Photoshop.
Prime Lens – a lens with a fixed focal range. Prime lenses tend to have higher quality and are smaller than zoom lenses. Their apertures are usually wider than found on standard zoom lenses.
Photography terminology explained in the letter Q
Quality – setting on a camera, generally used to set the resolution of a picture and whether to shoot in Raw or Jpeg.
Photography terminology explained in the letter R
RAW file – a RAW file preserves most of the information from the camera, it doesn’t process it or compress it. You can’t see or print a RAW file until you process it through a computer programme. Raw files are approximately 3-5 times the size of a Jpeg file.
Resolution – is the total amount of pixels the image has. The higher the resolution the more pixels the image has. This comes into effect mainly when printing images. To get good quality big images you will need a high-resolution image. Higher resolution images will also have given bigger file sizes.
Photography terminology explained in the letter S
Saturation – Colour intensity of an image. The more saturated an image, the higher the intensity of the colours. Desaturation turns an image black and white. Click here for our video on the difference between Saturation and Vibrance.
Sensor – Device inside a camera that is sensitive to light. The sensor captures the image; the bigger the sensor, the more information captured. Different cameras have varying sensor sizes. Common sensor sizes are full frame, APS-C and Micro 4/3. Click here for our ‘Sensor Size Comparison’ video.
Shutter Speed – Length of time the shutter is open when taking a photo. Slow shutter speeds will blur moving subjects, whereas faster shutter speeds like 1/500th of a second will freeze action. Slow shutter speeds are needed for long exposure photography, and faster shutter speeds are needed for photography with quick moving subjects that you need to freeze such as sports or wildlife.
Photography terminology explained in the letter T
Tonal Range – total number of tones within an image, from dark to light. A wider tonal range means more shades of colours (meaning more detail).
Tripod – Piece of photographic equipment designed to keep your camera still and steady. Click here to learn about tripods.
Photography terminology explained in the letter U
Underexposure – when the picture is too dark. Not enough light has entered the camera.
Photography terminology explained in the letter V
Vibrance – post-processing setting that allows you to target and adapt the dull, muted colours of an image. Click here for our video on the difference between Saturation and Vibrance.
Vignetting – where the corners of an image are made darker or lighter. Used to draw the viewers eye into the scene. Can be reduced or increased using post-processing software.
Photography terminology explained in the letter W
Watermark – text or image added to a photo to identify the ownership of the picture. Learn how to turn your own signature into a watermark here.
White balance – adjustment that compensates for the colour temperature of the scene. Cameras have certain white balance modes such as daylight, tungsten and flash.
Photography terminology explained in the letter X
X-Sync – The fastest flash sync speed of your camera. It’s the faster shutter speed at which the whole image sensor is exposed to allow in a burst of flash.
Photography terminology explained in the letter Y
Yellow filter – one of the most popular types of colour filters on black and white photos. Can now be added to black and white images in post-processing.
Photography terminology explained in the letter Z
Zoom lens – lens with a changeable focal length. E.g. you can zoom in and out with a zoom lens.
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