Cameras

More advanced DSLRs have a secondary LCD display on the top so that you can check the main shooting settings without needing the rear screen. Status displays are black and white (or black on green) and usually have a backlight button for use in dark conditions.

A metering mode where the camera measures the light from a very small area of the scene. This might be right in the centre or, on some cameras, it’s directly beneath the selected autofocus point.

Sony is best known as a giant electronics manufacturer making devices across a range of markets, but its camera division is doing especially well. The market for compact point and shoot cameras has fallen, but Sony is doing very well with its professionally-orientated full-frame A7 series and A9 cameras. It also makes a continually expanding range of high-end professional lenses.

SLT cameras are made by Sony as a kind of hybrid of the regular digital SLR design and the always-on live view of a mirrorless camera. They do have a mirror in the body, but it doesn’t flip up and down when you fire the shutter. Instead, it has a translucent surface so that the image can pass straight through to the sensor on the back of the camera.

Special flash mode where the camera’s exposure is extended beyond the brief burst of the flash. This makes it possible to record some of the ambient lighting too, and it’s a popular technique for illuminating a nearby subject brightly without losing background colour and detail.

Here, the camera focuses once when you half-press the shutter release then holds that focus point until you press the button the rest of the way to take the picture. This is the usual mode for taking one photograph at a time (as opposed to continuous shooting).

A useful mode if you’re shooting in a theatre or museum, but one that’s only available on compact cameras with in-lens shutters and mirrorless cameras with electronic shutters. On compact cameras you can get the same effect by turning off the focus ‘beep’ and shutter sounds.

The length of time the shutter is open during the exposure and usually quoted as fractions of a second. Each shutter speed is half as long as the one before, for example 1/30sec vs 1/60sec. This exposure ‘halving’ is the basis for balancing up lens aperture and ISO settings. A few cameras have external shutter speed dials but most simply display the shutter speed on the LCD display – you turn a control dial to change the speed.

Exposure mode where you choose the shutter speed and the camera selects a lens aperture to give the correct exposure. You get to choose the shutter speed manually, but the camera still takes care of the exposure automatically. On Canon cameras this is called Tv (time value) mode.

A standard part of digital image processing either in-camera or later on a computer. Sharpening processes increase the contrast around object outlines to make them look crisper. Good sharpening is all but invisible, bad sharpening leaves edge ‘halos’ you can see under magnification.

The camera waits for a set delay before firing the shutter. This gives the photographer time to get in position for a group shot – but it’s also useful for tripod shots or long exposures where you want to fire the shutter without jogging the camera.

These are all the same size but there are important differences. Older cameras may only be able to use SD cards, but more recent ones will be able to use SDHC cards too, but may not be able to use the latest SDXC format. Check your camera’s manual before buying these.

Automatic mode designed for beginners where the camera applies the settings that best suit the subject you’re shooting (landscape, portrait, action etc). Some cameras can analyse the scene in front of you and choose a scene mode automatically. Experts don’t normally bother with scene modes because they’re designed solely for those who don’t really want to get involved with individual camera settings. If you do know your way around a camera, you’ll generally want to make your own choices about the settings.

RGB stands for red, green and blue, the three colour ‘channels’ that go to make up all the colours in a digital image. It comes in two varieties – sRGB is a ‘universal’ RGB that can be used and displayed by any device, whereas Adobe RGB is a more specialised alternative for pros.

More advanced digital cameras have many shooting and setup options – so many, that you can sometimes forget what you’ve set them up to do. To get back to the default settings you need two options: 1) Reset shooting settings; 2) Reset custom settings.

A device which fires the camera’s shutter release from a distance, either via an electrical cable or a wireless signal. It’s useful if you need to stand some distance away from the camera and avoid jogging the camera when you fire the shutter.

A special slow sync flash mode which fires the flash at the end of the exposure not the start. This gives more natural-looking results with moving subjects because any movement trail will be behind your subject and not ahead of it (which looks odd).

Cameras with the ability to shoot RAW files will almost always offer a RAW+JPEG option too. Here, the camera shoots a single image but saves two versions – the RAW file and a JPEG processed and saved with the current camera settings. The JPEG is useful because you can share it with other people straight away and it also offers a useful benchmark when you’re processing the RAW file later.

An older camera designed still used by celebrated German manufacturer Leica. The ‘rangefinder’ is used for focusing – as you turn the focus ring on the lens, a small mirror in the top of the camera rotates to line up a ‘ghost’ image with the main image in the viewfinder. When this ghost image lines up, your subject is in focus.

A very useful option if you need to take pictures in a theatre, church or museum where it’s important to make no noise. Some Nikon DSLRs have a Quiet mode, though you can’t completely eliminate the noise from a DSLR’s shutter or mirror mechanism.

A useful feature on some cameras which puts all the most commonly used camera settings on a single screen. You can then use the cursor buttons to quickly select the setting you want and change it. It’s a pretty common option across all cameras, though the name may be different.

An override option in program AE mode which shifts the shutter speed and aperture combinations in favour of faster shutter speeds or smaller apertures. This is often quicker than swapping to aperture-priority or shutter-priority mode if it’s for a single picture.

In this mode, the camera chooses combinations of shutter speed and lens aperture automatically to give a good compromise between safe shutter speeds (no camera shake) and reasonable depth of field (smaller apertures).

Here, the camera tracks subject in continuous autofocus mode and uses its movement within the frame and any changes in its distance from the camera to work where it’s going to be at the moment the shutter fires.

The brand name for Canon’s more advanced compact digital cameras. They include long-zoom compacts, bridge cameras and Canon’s more sophisticated high-end compact cameras, which feature extensive manual controls and larger sensors.

Most cameras have a built-in flashgun which pops up automatically in low light or can be popped up by pressing a button. The flash can provide emergency light, but it’s harsh and short range. In many instances it’s best to leave the flash off and use higher ISO settings.

It’s about the easiest way of describing simple digital cameras that are inexpensive and designed for novices. They offer fully-automatic shooting modes that don’t require any particular photographic know-how and zoom lenses which cover most everyday needs. They quality is only average, though, and there’s little scope for overriding the camera.

The individual building block of digital images. Each individual pixel is a single block of colour, but when there are enough of them viewed from far enough away they merge to form the impression of a continuous-tone photographic image.

This is the correct technical name for the individual light receptors on a sensor, though many people call them pixels because each photosite corresponds to a pixel in the final image. Each photoreceptor gathers light (photons) and turns them into an electrical charge (electrons) which can be measured.

A means of correcting converging verticals in architectural shots and other perspective issues. You can get ‘perspective control’ lenses which use complex lens adjustments to fix the problem optically, or you can use software with perspective correction tools.

This is a key part of the optical viewfinder system of a digital SLR. It’s a five-sided prism inside a housing on top of the camera that reflects the image captured by the lens and formed on the camera’s focusing screen so that it’s the right way up and the right way round for viewing through the camera’s viewfinder eyepiece. Some cheaper DSLRs use a less expensive ‘pentamirror’ design instead. It costs less to make but does have a slight effect on the size and quality of the viewfinder image.

A set of four exposure modes that distinguishes a serious camera from simple point and shoot models. It stands for Program AE, Aperture-priority, Shutter-priority and Manual modes. You’ll find these on many better compact cameras and all DSLRs and mirrorless cameras.

The viewfinder in a digital SLR is optical because it’s created by an image formed by the lens on a glass ‘focussing screen’. The direct vision viewfinders on some compact cameras are optical because you’re seeing the world through a set of lenses and not via a digital display.

OLED stands for ‘organic light emitting diode’. It’s a more advanced display tech than regular LCDs with wider viewing angles, faster response, better brightness and reduced power consumption. The OLED electronic viewfinder is a selling point in the Fujifilm X-T1, for example.

Camera makers use special noise reduction processing techniques to reduce the appearance of noise in photos, but the drawback is image softness and haziness and a kind of ‘watercolour’ effect where areas of fine, subtle detail are smudged beyond recognition. Bad noise reduction can do as much harm as image noise – or more.

Random ‘speckling’ in an image caused by variations in the light levels captured by the photosites on the sensor. Noise is worse with the smaller photosites on small sensors and at higher ISO settings generally. You can get ‘chroma’ (coloured) noise and ‘luminance’ noise (general ‘grittiness’) the same colour as the background.

The most common type of rechargeable AA battery, and they’ve taken over from older, less efficient Ni-Cad batteries. NiMH batteries are inexpensive and often used in cheaper compact cameras, flashguns, battery grips and LED lights.

Stands for Near Field Communication, a wireless transfer system that relies on very close contact between devices – sometimes you simply tap or touch the devices together to establish contact. It can be used for transferring photos from a camera to a compatible printer, for example.

A control that’s practically universal on digital cameras. It’s a circular controller on the back of the camera with up/down/left/right buttons which can be used for positioning the autofocus point, menu navigation, camera settings and more.

Taking two shots on a single frame. In the days of film this meant locking the film advance when cocking the shutter and taking another picture on a frame of film that’s already been exposed. On a digital camera, the camera stores the first image in its memory and then merges it with the second.

This is the most sophisticated form of light metering used by cameras. The light values are measured at many points across the frame and compared to ‘known’ scenes so that the camera can work out what the subject is likely to be and the best way to expose it properly.

A fine interference pattern sometimes visible when you photograph fine patterns. It happens when these clash with the rectangular grid of pixels on the camera sensor. Actually, you almost never see it – most cameras have anti-aliasing/low pass filters to prevent, and it doesn’t seem to be an issue for those that don’t.

Just about all digital cameras have these or an equivalent and you use it to set the exposure mode, such as full auto, program auto exposure, scene modes, movie mode and so on. More advanced cameras add PASM modes – Program AE, Aperture-priority, Shutter-priority and Manual.

In order to maximise their light gathering power, each photosite on the camera sensor is covered by a tiny domed ‘microlens’ to capture and funnel in the light more effectively. Improvements to the microlens array can improve the sensor’s performance.

This is a sensor and lens format used by Olympus and Panasonic for their mirrorless camera ranges. The MFT sensor measures 17.3 x 13.0mm, so it’s smaller than the APS-C sensors used in rival mirrorless cameras. This does have a modest effect on overall image quality, but the payback is the both MFT cameras and lenses are substantially smaller and lighter than rival APS-C models. The MFT format also has a slightly squarer 4:3 (four-thirds) aspect ratio, which some photographers might prefer.

This is measured in gigabytes (GB), and the larger the memory capacity the more photos and video clips you can store. It’s hard to give precise advice since cameras and user needs vary so much, but 16GB is a good starting point if you shoot RAW files as well as JPEGs, and consider 64GB-256GB if you want to shoot video, especially 4K.

The number of pixels captured by the camera’s sensor. Smartphones typically have around 8 megapixels and upwards, while regular digital cameras typically have 16 megapixels or more. Megapixels used to be a good guide to image quality but now sensor size is more important.

Professional cameras that use sensors larger than full frame. These fill the space previously occupied by 120 roll film cameras, though they are massively more expensive. ‘Medium format’ sounds like there should be a larger size still, but it harks back to the days of film when you could get large format 5×4” or 10×8” sheet film cameras.

The traditional form of camera shutter, a physical device which blocks light from the sensor until the moment you press the shutter release, then opens to expose the sensor for the required amount of time before it closes again. Mechanical shutters are either focal plane types, just in front of the sensor, or in-lens ‘leaf’ types.
Electronic shutters offer shorter shutter speeds on paper, but with current technology they’re less effective at capturing fast-moving objects.

Where you set both the shutter speed and the lens aperture used by the camera. The camera’s exposure meter may recommend the settings, but you’re free to use or ignore this information. Manual exposure gives you total control but requires some experience.

Many cameras and some telephoto lenses offer a ‘macro’ button or mode. This is rarely the same as true macro photography at 1:1 magnification. Instead, ‘macro’ is simply used as another word for close-up. This is the macro button on a Fuji X30 compact camera.

The chief component in image noise and the one that’s most difficult to remove because software can’t easily distinguish between random image noise and real image detail. The result is that the more noise reduction you apply, the more you tend to lose fine image detail, resulting in images with obvious and objectionable ‘smoothing’.

A filter directly in front of most camera sensors to prevent interference (moiré) effects between any fine patterns and textures you photograph and the rectangular grid of photosites on the sensor. These filters actually blur fine detail slightly, and some makers no longer use them.

Company which champions old, analog cameras, outdated or cross-processed film and relaunched classic lens designs. Lomography products are known for their expense, sometimes makeshift construction and general unpredictability, but also revered by their fans for these very reasons (well, probably not the expense), because they introduce the kind of randomness, unexpectedness and engagement lost in the transition to modern digital imaging.

Where the camera displays what the sensor is capturing either on the rear LCD or in an electronic viewfinder. All compact cameras and mirrorless cameras are effectively in ‘live view’ all the time. It’s only out of the ordinary on a DSLR, which has to go into a special mirror-up ‘live view’ mode.

A device for measuring light levels. Digital cameras come with their own sophisticated internal light meters, but it is possible to get external light meters where the settings have to be transferred to the camera manually. This is slower, but has advantages in some circumstances.

A relatively inexpensive general purpose lens sold with a camera body as a kit. Buying both at the same time is much cheaper than buying them individually. Most DSLRs and mirrorless cameras are also sold ‘body only’ for those who already have lenses.

Most digital photos are shot as JPEG images. This is a universal image file format that uses sophisticated compression to keep the files small and manageable. JPEGs are created by processing the RAW data captured by the camera. Some cameras let you save these RAW files instead. The files are larger and you need to process them later on a computer, but they offer the potential for better quality.

This is a standardised, universal file format for digital photos that can be displayed by practically any device without any kind of conversion. It uses powerful compression to reduce the file size of digital photos so that you can get more on to a memory card or a hard disk, and they’re quicker to transfer. There can be some loss of quality (often invisible to the naked eye), so for ultimate quality many photographers shoot photos in their camera’s RAW format instead. It’s only more advanced cameras that offer this RAW option, and it produces much larger files which you will need to process yourself later on.

This setting increases the camera sensor’s sensitivity to light. Each ISO step doubles the sensitivity, so it’s easy to use ISO as another exposure control alongside shutter speed and lens aperture. The more you increase the ISO, though, the more the image quality degrades.

A camera setting or remote controller which fires the camera’s shutter at set intervals, stopping when it’s taken a specified number of images. The pictures can then be used to analyse movement or change over time or, more likely, combined to make a time lapse movie.

Sometimes called an ‘intervalometer’, this is a feature on more advanced cameras that takes picture at fixed intervals automatically. It’s most often used for time lapse photography. You set the interval between pictures and the number of shots you want the camera to take.

A graphical display of the brightness values in the picture. The darkest tones are at the left and the brightest on the right, and the vertical bars show the number of pixels for each brightness value. Histograms are an invaluable exposure aid when taking pictures, and when editing them later.

High-speed sync is a flash mode that counters limited flash synchronisation speeds of focal plane shutters by pulsing the flash several times, potentially impacting flash power. Elinchrom’s ‘High Sync’ reduces this power loss.

HDR stands for high dynamic range photography. It combines a series of frames taken at different exposures to capture a much wider dynamic (brightness) range than the camera could capture with a single exposure. These exposures are merged using HDR software.

Any photography – obviously – where you’re holding the camera with your hands rather than using a tripod or some other form of camera support. It has special implications for night and low light photography where it’s important to use shutter speeds fast enough to prevent camera shake.

Also known as battery grips, these are accessories that attach to the bottom of some DSLRs or mirrorless cameras to offer extended battery life and, usually, a duplicate set of controls to make the camera suitable for extended use in portrait (vertical) mode. In some cases, a battery grip may also increase the continuous shooting speed of the camera. For example, the battery grip of the Nikon D850 increases its continuous shooting speed from 7fps to 9fps.

Film grain is caused by the random clumping of silver halide grains (black and white) or dye clouds (colour film) – the individual grains or colour spots are too small to see. Film grain looks very different to digital noise – many photographers use film grain simulation filters and tools.

GPS receivers use global positioning satellites to fix the camera’s location and embed this in the photo’s metadata. You can look this up later and many programs can show the location the photo was taken on a map. Only a few cameras have GPS built in, but it’s standard on smartphones.

A mounting system first developed by GoPro but now used widely by other action camera and accessory makers. In theory, any GoPro mount compatible item should be compatible with any other.

An advanced kind of electronic shutter that can capture the entire image area at once, instead of scanning it strip by strip. This should eliminate the rolling shutter effect usually associated with electronic shutters and make them much more effective for capturing moving subjects. It does, however, require advanced sensor technology, especially in larger sensor sizes, and powerful image processing, which is why it’s still in its infancy in the mass market.

A unit of storage used both for computer hard disks (and SSDs) and for memory cards. 1GB is approximately 1,000 megabytes.

This is Nikon’s name for its full frame DSLRs, to distinguish them from its APS-C size ‘DX’ models. Most Nikon lenses are designed to fit this larger FX format. Those that don’t have ‘DX’ in the model name – though they can still be used on an FX Nikon in ‘DX crop’ mode.

Video with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. It’s sometimes abbreviated to ‘1080 video’.

This is a sensor the same size as the 35mm film negative, measuring 36 x 24mm. This is the most desirable camera type for most enthusiasts and pros, but full frame cameras are bigger, heavier and more expensive. Most DSLRs and mirrorless cameras use smaller APS-C sensors.

Camera, lens (and film) maker now specialising in high-end enthusiast and professional equipment such as the X-T2 mirrorless interchangeble lens camera, X100F high-end compact camera and GFX medium-format mirrorless camera.