Tip #3747 - Photography Jargon Buster
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Photography
Jargon Buster
If you’ve recently
bought a new digital camera or if you're planning on buying one in the
near future, these technical terms will help keep you better equipped.
The best buyer is one who is better informed and nothing is a better beginning
than knowing what some of the terms mean when it comes to understanding
the basic settings on your camera. Let's begin!
Pixel
The word "pixel"
stands for picture element. What you see on the LCD viewfinder of your
camera or on your PC monitor is a bunch of pixels. A general rule of thumb
is that the greater the pixel count, the better and sharper the image.
A greater pixel count means the image can be viewed at its native resolution.
That is, the resolution it was captured at, with less loss in visual detail.
Megapixel
The megapixel (MP)
rating of a camera represents the resolution (in millions of pixels) that
the camera is capable of producing. A six megapixel camera’s CCD
sensor would be capable of capturing an image containing up to approximately
six million pixels.
Sensor
The digital image
on your digicam is produced by the camera’s sensor. The sensor is
basically a unit that measures the brightness of each pixel. The sensor
unit consists of millions of tiny pixels in an array like fashion. Each
pixel is tasked with capturing photons and each pixel can capture a certain
number of them. The photons collected by each pixel are converted into
an electrical charge via a photodiode. After this, the electrical charge
needs to be amplified and then converted to a digital charge to a digital
value. That is done by the ADC (Analogues to Digital Converter).
CCD and CMOS
There are two types
of digital camera sensors. The most common are CCD (Charge Couples Device)
sensors, used in nearly all cameras. CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor)
sensors are relatively faster and smaller than their CCD counterparts
and they are found only on some select high-end cameras.
Optical and
Digital Zoom
It’s simple.
Optical = good. Digital = not so good. Optical zoom uses the camera optics.
That is, the lens, to bring the subject in for a closer focus. This is
the actual way a zoom should work and even film cameras use this sort
of zoom. Digital zoom is a "simulated" zoom, which means the
sensor crops the image and then enlarges the cropped portion to the size
of the original. This is called interpolation and it results in image
quality loss. Therefore, digital zooming has nothing to do with camera
optics.
Noise
Noise is nothing but
unwanted pixels. It's like the presence of color speckles where there
should be none. For example, instead of a blue sky, you notice faint pink,
purple and other color speckles among the otherwise blue color. One of
the major differences between a consumer digital camera and a digital
Single Lens Reflex (dSLR) is that the former produces images with a lot
of noise when using high ISOs and long exposure times and the latter is
practically noise free.
Pixelation
This refers to the
graininess you sometimes see in an image, which can be caused by either
a weak pixel fill rate, improper geometry of the individual pixels or
other factors, like color accuracy, noise and unnecessary storage of pixels.
It’s an unwanted element in digital photography.
The ISO Rating
This value represents
the sensitivity of the image sensor to the light present in a scene. The
higher this figure is (64, 100, 200, 400, 800 and higher), the better
equipped the camera will be to take good photos in low light conditions.
White Balance
White balance is a
camera setting that can be tuned to adjust the tone of the color in the
resultant output. Its objective is to make the scene as neutral as possible,
as far as, white goes. This way, the white actually appears white without
hues. A camera will display a white object with different hues under yellow,
fluorescent or natural light. This is a naturally occurring phenomenon
that can spoil photographs with even the best cameras. It all happens
if the white balance is not set correctly. Cameras have settings, such
as Auto, Incandescent, Fluorescent and more for the white balance.
Hope this helps you
out!
~ Zahid H. Javali
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