Photographic Terminology

Olivia Singleton

Unit 57: Photography and Photographic Practice TerminologyP1, P2, M1, M2

Shutter Speedshutter speed is ‘the amount of time that the shutter is open’. Shutter speed is measured in seconds – or in most cases fractions of seconds. The bigger the denominator the faster the speed (ie 1/1000 is much faster than 1/30).

On these pictures I have used slow shutter speed and fast shutter speed, both shutter speeds have made my pictures magical because the slow shutter speed has slowed everything down in the picture, it’s as if you can slow down time in one single picture and capture everything in it but also you don’t miss anything because it captures things that may come into the picture after pressing the shutter. When I used fast shutter speed on the water fountain compared to slow shutter speed in the second picture of the water fountain you can see how my images are different because fast shutter speed has captured everything in that moment and nothing else.

Shutter Speed

Fast Shutter Speed Slow Shutter Speed

Iso

Film speed is the measure of a photographic film's sensitivity to light, determined by sensitometry and measured on various numerical scales, the most recent being the ISO system. A closely related ISO system is used to measure the sensitivity of digital imaging systems. This has changed my images by making them grainy and some darker and lighter than others.

ISO speed 6400 ISO speed 3200

ISO speed 1600 ISO speed 800

ISO speed 400 ISO speed 200

ISO speed 100

ISO

High ISO Low ISO

Aperture & Depth of Field

Wide or large apertures correspond with the small f-stop numbers available on your camera. So an aperture of f/2.8 is wide, while an aperture of f/22 is small. Again, focusing distance plays a part on the overall effect, with wide apertures offering considerably more depth of field when focused on a subject far away than they do when focused on a subject that’s close to the lens. However, changing the focusing distance is often the least convenient way to control depth of field – it’s much easier to simply select an alternative aperture setting. The only thing you need to be aware of is that shifting from a large aperture to a small one can lead to blurred photos.

A camera can only focus its lens at a single point, but there will be an area that stretches in front of and behind this focus point that still appears sharp.

This zone is known as the depth of field. It’s not a fixed distance, it changes in size and can be described as either ‘shallow’ (where only a narrow zone appears sharp) or deep (where more of the picture appears sharp).

F/5.6 aperture

F/9 aperture

F/6.3 aperture

Aperture & Depth of Field

Narrow Depth of Field Wide Depth of Field

Manual Exposure

When the camera is in the manual exposure mode, you can change either aperture or shutter speed, or both. Once the camera is in the manual exposure mode, the current aperture and shutter speed are shown on the monitor. See the image below. However, the camera only permits a user to change aperture and shutter speed one at a time. The one can be changed is shown in green.

Automatic ExposureA camera in automatic exposure (abbreviation: AE) mode automatically calculates and adjusts exposure settings to match (as closely as possible) the subject's mid-tone to the mid-tone of the photograph. For most cameras this means using an on-board TTL exposure meter.

White Balance

White balance (WB) is the process of removing unrealistic colour casts, so that objects which appear white in person are rendered white in your photo. Proper camera white balance has to take into account the "colour temperature" of a light source, which refers to the relative warmth or coolness of white light. Our eyes are very good at judging what is white under different light sources, but digital cameras often have great difficulty with auto white balance (AWB) — and can create unsightly blue, orange, or even green colour casts. Understanding digital white balance can help you avoid these colour casts, thereby improving your photos under a wider range of lighting conditions.

Sunlight

Cloudy

Rule of thirds

The rule of thirds is a "rule of thumb" or guideline which applies to the process of composing visual images such as designs, films, paintings, and photographs. The guideline proposes that an image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts by two equally spaced horizontal lines and two equally spaced vertical lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections.[2] Proponents of the technique claim that aligning a subject with these points creates more tension, energy and interest in the composition than simply centring the subject would.

before

Examples of Rule of thirds