Glossary

Achromat

Is a system consisting of two lenses to reduce chromatic aberrations.

Active D-Lighting

With the Active D-Lighting function, Nikon uses a trick to expand the dynamic range of JPG files. The image is underexposed and the depths are lightened. Please note that this can lead to image errors and halos.

Analogue camera

Camera for analogue photography that records images on photographic film, e.g. slide film.

Angle of view

The angle of view indicates the angle that can be captured with a lens. Wide-angle lenses record a larger angle of the subject than longer focal lengths.

Aperture

The aperture or lens diaphragm is a mechanical device consisting of blades that regulates the amount of incident light and influences the depth of field. A small f-number means a large opening of the aperture and thus a lot of light reaching the sensor. This results in a shallower depth of field in the picture.

Aperture button

On SLR cameras, the f-stop button can be used to activate the f-stop function. Since the aperture is fully open, regardless of the setting. This makes the viewfinder image brighter than at the set aperture. Only when the shutter is released does the aperture close to the previously set value.

Aperture priority

Aperture priority is a semi-automatic exposure programme in which the photographer pre-selects the aperture and the camera then immediately determines the appropriate exposure time with the help of the light meter and the set ISO value.

Architectural photography

Architectural photography deals with the photography of buildings and other architecturally valuable objects.

Autofocus

Autofocus (abbreviation: AF) refers to the automatic focusing of the camera. It measures the distance to the subject and controls the motor of the lens so that the desired object is in focus.

Available Light

Available Light refers to photography with available light using the light sources and or reflections available at the shooting location.

Battery grip

Accessory that allows the use of 2 batteries, improves the feel and often has an additional shutter release for pictures in portrait format.

Bayonet

Term for the (manufacturer-specific) connection point between camera and lens.

Blue hour

The blue hour is the mood of light that prevails immediately after the sun has set and envelops the surroundings in a special light. The remaining light of the sun is reflected by the atmosphere and therefore appears blue.

Bokeh effect

Used in photography to denote areas of blur before and after the depth of field produced by the lens. The blur is produced by blur circles. Their quality is related to the processing and construction of the aperture.

Bouncer

Attachment for an external flash to produce a softer light.

Bracketing

Bracketing refers to the automatic exposure series that the camera can take to provide several images with different exposure results.

Brightness noise

Noise is generally understood to be disturbances in the image that usually occur in photographs taken with low lighting. As a result, evenly coloured areas appear differently bright, which is often only more clearly recognisable when the image is converted into a greyscale image.

Camera RAW Converter

This is also called a raw format converter. With the Camera RAW Converter, an image editing software can open the RAW format (raw format or digital negative) and then edit it.

Chromatic aberration

Also called colour fringing. Chromatic aberrations are colour errors caused by the lenses.

Colour balance

Colour balance refers to the distribution of colours in the image, which are only in balance when no colour cast is visible. Colour balance is therefore only given when all colours are almost equally saturated.

Colour depth

The colour depth describes with how many bits the colour information of a pixel has been stored. If an image is stored with 8 bits, 256 colour levels can be represented. With 24 bits there are 16.7 million colours. This very realistic colour representation is also called true colour. In particular, colour gradients appear more gradual if an image has a lower colour depth.

Contrast

Contrast is the difference between the lightest and darkest areas of an image. The contrast range is calculated from this. The higher the contrast, the more vivid an image appears. However, if the contrast ratio is low, the colours often appear dull and the picture flat.

Crop factor

The crop factor describes the ratio of the image sensor used to the 35mm format.

Depth of field

The area in which a subject is sharply depicted is called depth of field. Images can be made more vivid with depth of field, for example by keeping the background out of focus with a large aperture. This makes the depth of field very shallow.

Diffraction blur

Diffraction blur is the loss of sharpness caused, for example, in photographs by the diffraction of light at strongly closed apertures. This can sometimes occur as early as f22.

Digital zoom

Instead of an optical zoom, smaller digital cameras in particular use a so-called digital zoom. This only enlarges the image section. It works in the same way as the magnifying glass in an image editing programme and thus sometimes significantly reduces the image quality.

Distortion

Lenses of all cameras are more or less prone to distortion. Straight lines are slightly bent at the edge of the image. Squares become cushions and other effects can occur. Image editing programmes can correct these distortions.

Equipment

Equipment or photographic equipment is the photographic accessories that a photographer needs to take photographs. It includes cameras, lenses, tripods, flashes, filters and sometimes other accessories.

Exif

Translated, this abbreviation means "Exchangeable Image File Format". Exif data is used to add further information to digital images in order to make them available to other users. Examples are aperture, exposure time, shooting date, camera type or focal length.

Exposure bracket

With an exposure series, instead of taking a single picture, you take several of the same subject by deliberately increasing or decreasing the exposure values. The best exposed image can then be selected on the computer or merged into an HDR.

Exposure compensation

Corrects the exposure meter in automatic modes (A/Av/P/Tv/S) to produce brighter or darker images. Usually available via the +/- button.

Exposure metering

Usually measures the exposure through the lens. The light meter calculates the light reflected from the subject and is tuned to an average grey value. In SLR cameras it is usually coupled to the autofocus. The relationship to the rest of the subject then determines the exposure meter mode.

Exposure time

Many compact digital cameras have fixed apertures (see aperture) that cannot be varied. In this case, the exposure is controlled exclusively by the shutter speed. The exposure time can be set manually as the shutter speed on some digital cameras.

Exposure time

The exposure time or shutter speed determines how long the image sensor or negative is exposed to light. The longer, the brighter the image.

Eyecup

An eyecup is a padded or rubberised, usually shell-shaped attachment that can be placed on the viewfinder, and in rare cases on the display of professional digital cameras.

F-stop

F-stop refers to the reduction or closing of the aperture in order to widen the range of depth of field of an image.

Fill-in flash

Fill-in flash is the use of a flash to lighten shadow areas.

Flash adapter

Flash adapters are used to attach foreign flash units to cameras with different flash sockets.

Flash cable

The use of a flash cable provides a connection from the camera to an external flash.

Flash guide number

The flash guide number indicates the power of a flash in combination with a 50mm lens. This gives an approximate estimate of how far the flash output will reach. Depending on the focal length used, the results will vary.

Flash shoe

Device for attaching an external flash to a camera.

Focal length

Focal length is the distance that parallel rays of light from a subject are focused to a point behind the lens. It is the distance between the centre of the lens and the image sensor. The focal length is measured and specified in millimetres (mm). Lenses are sorted or categorised based on the focal length. For example, there are wide-angle, normal and telephoto lenses.

The larger the focal length for the same size sensor, the more the subject is enlarged and at the same time the angle of view is reduced. This is the reason why telephoto lenses need a longer focal length.

Fume cupboard

A print is the image of a slide film, negative film or image file in paper form, which is usually produced in photographic laboratories.

Image chip

The image chip is built into digital cameras and is also called CCD or CMOS, depending on the construction. It is responsible for creating a digital image from the light entering the camera.

Image memory

Image storage comes in the form of all kinds of data media, e.g. memory card, hard disk, CD or DVD.

Image noise

Image noise occurs mainly in very dark areas of an image or in very poor lighting conditions.

Image sensor

The image sensor is the recording medium in digital cameras. It is equipped with millions of tiny photocells that are sensitive to light. Image sensors come in a wide variety of sizes.

Image stabiliser

With the technical process of the optical image stabiliser, it is nowadays possible to minimise the risk of camera shake to a certain extent with excessively long exposure times.

Interpolation

Interpolation is the process of adding image content. This creates transitions between neighbouring pixels and artificially increases the optical resolution. However, the supposedly higher resolution has the consequence that the image sharpness suffers.

JPEG

The JPEG file format is often used as the recording format for digital cameras. However, it is a lossy compression format, so that although the size of the file is reduced, detail and colour fidelity suffer somewhat. If images in JPEG format are opened and saved several times, there is a further loss of quality because the colour fringes caused by the compression increase.

Magnification

The magnification indicates the size at which an object is imaged on the sensor.

Moiré effect

If image patterns of different resolution are superimposed, colour interference, also called moiré effect, often occurs. Small patterns then become long stripes.

Motion blur

Occurs with movements with longer exposure times. The intensity depends on the speed of the object and the exposure time.

RAW

If you use the RAW format for taking pictures in the camera, the recording data of the sensor are saved unprocessed and without losses. Due to the larger amount of data and colour depth, these recordings allow for later image post-processing on a large scale.

Recording area

The shooting range is the distance range within which an image can be sharply focused.

Resolution

Resolution is not only decisive when printing pictures. It describes the level of detail of the camera and, depending on the medium in which the resolution is used, uses, for example, the mass of pixels, pixels per inch (dpi) or line pairs per millimetre (lpmm). For digital cameras, the value of the pixels is often given as the resolution. Printed matter is measured in dpi.

Shutter priority

The camera can be released even if it was not possible to focus on the subject the camera was aiming at.

Shutter release delay

This refers to the time that elapses between pressing the shutter button and taking the picture.

White balance

White balance is the process of adjusting the colour of the camera's image to the colour temperature of the ambient light. The aim is to reproduce colours more realistically. Without white balance, which is often done automatically in digital cameras, the image can look fake.