Photography terms explained - ISO, aperture, shutter speed, and more - Android
Photography is much more than pointing a camera and pressing a button. This is something you realize very soon after getting your hands on a serious shooter. Maybe you stumbled upon your smartphone’s manual mode and asked yourself what all these settings are. There is a lot to learn in this endless pit of photography terms, settings, skills, and techniques.
Becoming proficient in photography will take more than reading this post, but you can use this as a general guide to get you started. In here you will find the most important terms and concepts revolving the art of photography. You can also bookmark this page and come back to it to refresh your knowledge.
Photography is much more than pointing a camera and pressing a button.
Edgar Cervantes
This is the first thing you need to learn if you want to dive into the world of serious photography. The exposure triangle consists of three settings you need to keep in check in order to properly expose an image. These are aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. Let’s touch a bit on each one of them.
The exposure triangle is the first thing you need to learn when getting serious with photography.
Edgar Cervantes
This is a photography term you’ve probably heard often. Aperture is defined by the size of the opening with which light can enter the camera. It is measured in f-stops, which is a ratio of the focal length divided by the opening size. The smaller the f-stop the wider the opening. An f/1.8 aperture is wider than f/2.8, for example.
Aperture has one main effect in photographs, which is depth of field. Using a wider aperture like f/1.8 will create a smaller depth of field. This will enhance bokeh, which is the popular blurry background effect in photos. Tightening the aperture will keep more in focus.
In order to take a photograph, a camera needs to let light into the sensor. The camera has a shutter, which stops light from reaching the sensor until activated. When a shot is triggered, the shutter will open up and expose the sensor to entering light. The time the shutter stays open is referred to as shutter speed.
Motion blur is not always a bad thing!
Edgar Cervantes
Shutter speed is typically measured in seconds and fractions of a second. A shutter speed of 1/100 will expose the sensor for a hundredth of a second. Likewise, a 1/2 shutter speed will last half a second. You can also leave the shutter open for multiple seconds, which is commonly referred to as a long exposure shot.
A faster shutter speed better freezes the scene. Elongating shutter speed will brighten an image, but it can also create motion blur (which is not always bad).
The next photography term on our list is ISO, which relates to sensor (or film) sensitivity to light. A lower ISO makes the sensor less sensitive to light, meaning it either needs more illumination or a longer shutter speed to properly expose an image. Increasing the ISO makes your sensor more sensitive to light, allowing you to shoot in darker environments, with tighter apertures, and/or using faster shutter speeds.
Increasing the ISO creates more grain or noise.
Edgar Cervantes
ISO is measured in numbers. While manufacturers used to stick to ISO 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, and so on (doubling in value), things have changed with more recent cameras. Smaller increments have been introduced for better refinement, but the concept is the same. ISO 100 is half as sensitive as ISO 200, which is also half as sensitive as ISO 400.
The effects of ISO are simple to understand. A higher ISO will make a sensor more sensitive, and therefore, make an image brighter. At the same time, increasing the ISO creates more grain or noise.
Most cameras featuring this shooting mode label it as “A”, and one would usually find it in more advanced bodies like DSLRs, mirrorless, and mid-to-high-end point-and-shoot cameras.
The mode’s name explains exactly what aperture priority does: it prioritizes aperture as the only setting you have to worry about. Aperture priority is much like auto mode, but grants control over aperture and automates only shutter speed. Once your ISO is set, the camera will allow you to open or close the aperture using a dial. The appropriate shutter speed will be determined by the camera’s light meter and set for you automatically.
If you have ever seen a camera button with “+” and “-” signs in it, that would be the exposure compensation control, otherwise known as exposure value (EV). This will help when shooting in any of the auto or semi-auto modes (aperture priority, shutter priority, etc.).
Cameras try to get the right exposure by measuring light, but they don’t always get what you intended to capture. You may not even want a well-exposed image. Sometimes you want things to look a little darker to add mood, for example. With exposure compensation, you can tell the camera it’s capturing exposure incorrectly, and it will make up for it by adjusting other settings (usually ISO).
Exposure compensation is usually measured by f stops like so: –1.0, –0.7, –0.3, 0.0, +0.3, +0.7, +1.0. In this case, -1.0 would be one stop less, while +1.0 is a stop higher.
The Oxford Dictionary defines the photography term called dynamic range as “the ratio of the largest to the smallest intensity of sound that can be reliably transmitted or reproduced by a particular sound system.” That definition actually refers to audio, but the idea is similar in photography. This term relates to how much data a camera can capture at the extremes of exposure in a scene, from the darkest to the lightest parts of a scene.
Dynamic range is measured in stops, where each stop equals double or half the amount of light. Increasing exposure by one stop means doubling the light. If you were shooting at shutter speed 1/100, one stop brighter would be 1/50, while one stop darker would be 1/200.
Put simply, focal length is the distance between a camera sensor (or film) and a lense’s point of convergence.
The hardest part is understanding what the point of convergence is (also known as optical center). When light rays enter a lens, they travel through glass and bend to converge in a single point. This point is where light data is collected to form a sharp image for the sensor to record. Manufacturers measure the focal length focused to infinity to keep a standard.
Focal length is measured in millimeters. A 50mm lens will have a point of convergence that is 50mm (or 5cm) from the sensor. Focal length also determines how “zoomed in” you are, changes perspective, and affects depth of field.
In photography, camera zoom refers to making a subject appear closer or farther away in an image. Zooming in gives you a closer look at objects, while zooming out will let you capture a wider space. Cameras use three types of zoom technology: optical, digital, and hybrid.
Optical zoom is achieved by using a series of lens elements. Glass can move through the lens to zoom in or out. Digital zoom achieves a similar effect without mechanical work or glass elements. It will essentially cut off areas around your scene to make it seem like you are closer to the subject. Digital zoom is technically cropping. Hybrid zoom is a whole new photography term/concept. It takes advantage of optical zoom, digital zoom, and software to get improved results when zooming in further than the lens’s physical capabilities.
The next photography terms we’ll talk about is White balance, which refers to the effects color temperature and tint have in photographs. Different light sources emit varying color temperatures, ranging in a spectrum between orange and blue. Likewise, light comes with tint, which ranges between green and magenta. Changing the white balance settings will help you find a balance between these colors and achieve a more natural effect.
Color temperature is measured in kelvins (K). In photography, we have certain white balance options to help figure out the correct kelvin levels one should use under different circumstances.
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