Photography for bloggers terminology. I’ve covered a lot of the “fun” aspects of photography, things like lighting and composition that are creative, but that you can easily see and play with. As you start gaining ground and becoming more experienced, you’ll want to start using the more technical elements that your camera offers, so I thought I’d put together a guide to some of the terms you should become familiar with.  Just an aside, I had the privilege of working with the Canadian Film Center years and years ago and I remember how cool I felt when I could start using the technical terms and short forms in regular speech, so that’s kind of the goal here. Get you comfortable enough with the terminology that you can “hang” with the big boys.

PHOTOGRAPHY FOR BLOGGERS TERMINOLOGY

Exposure. This is a term that’s often used interchangeably between: aperture, ISO and shutter speed, but it’s actually the quantity of light that gets captured by the sensor.

ISO number. For those of you who learned photography on a film camera (like me), you’re surely very familiar with this term (think speed of the film). ISO actually stands for International Standards Organization and refers to the measure of light sensitivity. Originally, it was in reference to your film but now, on a DSLR, you are adjusting the sensitivity of your camera’s sensor. Low sensitivity is represented by a low ISO number and high sensitivity is represented by a high ISO number. Just like with the cameras of old, a high ISO can make your photos “grainy” or “noisy”.

ISO 100 is great for daylight use.

ISO 400 is great as the sun is setting.

ISO 1600 is better used for low light or when there is lots of movement.

ISO 6400 is the next level after 1600 and is used for even darker shots. Also, note that your image will be more grainy.

F-stop/Aperture. This refers to how much your image is in focus and how much light is hitting that sensor. Another way to think about it, is that it’s like the pupil of your eye that get bigger or smaller depending on how much light is passing through. F-stop is the term used for the size of the aperture you are using. The higher the f-stop, the smaller the aperture (less light getting through). When you see f/8, f/32 that’s your f-stop. I wish I could give you the exact f-stop to use, but because it’s dependent on a number of factors like who or what you are photographing, your shutter speed and the type of lens you are using, you’ll just have to set aside a day to play with it. The first key to remember is that if you let more light in (lower number) you need to adjust the shutter speed to match (shorten the time of exposure). And the second key to remember is that the aperture also ties in with the focal length, so it lets you control the Depth of Field.

Depth of field. This term is used for how in focus your image is in relation to the subject. So an example would be a photo of a bumble bee resting on a flower that’s in focus whereas the rest of the flower/field is softly out of focus. This would denote a shallow depth of field and it allows you to highlight a part of your composition.

Shutter speed. Simply put, this is how long the shutter stays open allowing the light through to the sensor (you know when it sound like forever to hear the click of your camera and when you do, it sounds slow and laboured). This is important when you are taking shots at night. The one thing to remember, however, is that using a long shutter speed makes anything moving in front of your lens appear blurry (good time to use the tripod). Some examples of long shutter speeds are seeing a road at night with the blur of car headlights, or an artistic shot of an amusement park where all you see is the colours of the ride or even a night sky where you see the blur of the stars.

White balance. I wanted to include white balance because it is a great way to illustrate the difference between our eyes and brain vs a camera. Basically, white balance is the removal of coloured hues that are cast on white. For example, if there is a blueish light that’s cast on a white wall, a human will still see the wall as white, but a camera will pick up the blue and that’s the effect you’ll get in your photograph. There is no setting on your camera for white balance, but it something that you need to be aware of.

Of course, there are more parts to your camera (if there are any you’d like me to cover, please let me know in the comments), but these are the basics that you should definitely start being familiar with as your photography skills start to grow. Yes, it can get confusing and there are moments when I just flip my camera to automatic in complete exacerbation, but it’s still important to go back and figure out what went wrong and how to fix it for the next time.

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feature image of ferris wheel courtesy of DollarPhotoClub, infographic courtesy of hamburger-fotospots.de

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caroline

Caroline has worked with international designers in fashion retail and completed professional makeup courses when working in the beauty industry. Her love of writing, photography and film inspired her to work at the Canadian Film Center and then to earn a BFA in Screenwriting. In addition to her blog, Style On The Side, you can see her work in Huffington Post Canada and other international websites.

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