Browse the dictionary
840 terms · page 2 of 35
Amp Glow
A coloured brightening at one edge or corner of a long exposure, caused by heat and stray light from on-chip electronics.
Colour & Colour ManagementAnalogous Colours
Colours that sit adjacent to one another on the colour wheel, producing a harmonious and unified effect.
Sensors & Digital CaptureAnalogue Gain
Amplification applied to the sensor's signal before it is digitised, which is the physical mechanism behind ISO settings.
Sensors & Digital CaptureAnalogue-to-digital Converter
The circuit that turns the analogue voltage from each photosite into a discrete numerical value.
Optics, Lenses & FiltersAnamorphic Lens
A lens containing cylindrical elements that squeeze a wide field horizontally onto a standard frame, to be unsqueezed on projection.
Optics, Lenses & FiltersAngle of View
The angular extent of the scene a lens and sensor combination captures, usually quoted across the frame's diagonal.
Focus & Depth of FieldAnimal and Bird Detection
Subject recognition trained on animal anatomy, able to find and hold an eye on a creature rather than a human face.
Exposure & MeteringAperture
The adjustable opening inside a lens that controls how much light passes through to the sensor, and with it the depth of field.
Optics, Lenses & FiltersAperture Blades
The overlapping leaves inside a lens that form the iris, whose number and shape determine the geometry of the opening.
Exposure & MeteringAperture Priority
A semi-automatic mode, marked A or Av, in which the photographer sets aperture and ISO while the camera chooses shutter speed.
Optics, Lenses & FiltersApochromatic Lens
A lens corrected to bring three wavelengths of light to a common focus, rather than the two of a conventional achromat.
Cameras, Formats & SystemsAPS-C
A sensor format roughly 23.5 by 15.6 millimetres, giving a crop factor of about 1.5× against full frame.
Cameras, Formats & SystemsAPS-H
An intermediate sensor format of about 28.7 by 19 millimetres, with a crop factor near 1.3×.
Cameras, Formats & SystemsArca-Swiss Plate
A dovetail quick-release plate standard, widely adopted so heads and plates from different makers interoperate.
Genres, Movements & TheoryArchitectural Photography
Photography of buildings and structures, concerned with form, space and the accurate rendering of geometry.
Files, Metadata & WorkflowArchive
Long-term storage of completed work in a form intended to remain readable for decades.
Composition & Visual DesignAspect Ratio
The proportional relationship between an image's width and its height.
Optics, Lenses & FiltersAspherical Element
A lens element whose surface departs from a simple sphere, correcting aberrations that spherical glass cannot.
Optics, Lenses & FiltersAstigmatism
An aberration in which lines running radially and tangentially from the frame centre focus at different distances.
Genres, Movements & TheoryAstrophotography
Photography of the night sky, from wide-field starscapes to magnified images of deep-sky objects.
Composition & Visual DesignAsymmetrical Balance
A composition in which unequal elements are arranged so the frame still feels stable overall.
Genres, Movements & TheoryAura
Walter Benjamin's term for the unique presence of an original artwork, which he argued mechanical reproduction dissolves.
Exposure & MeteringAuto Exposure Bracketing (AEB)
Shooting a rapid sequence of frames at different exposures around the metered value, as insurance or as source material for merging.
Exposure & MeteringAuto Exposure Lock (AE-L)
A control that freezes the metered exposure so the frame can be recomposed without the reading changing.