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Stopping Down

What Does Stopping Down Refer to When Talking About Photography? When taking photography, ‘stopping down’ refers to the process of narrowing the aperture within a lens to increase the sharpness of the image being captured. when a photographer stops down a lens they increase the aperture value, limiting the amount of light allowed to pass through the lens, and on to the image sensor of film. The ability to stop down is dependant on the conditions within which a photographer is shooting, low light conditions require wider apertures and stopping down in these situations could lead to under-exposure. supplemental lighting …

Studio

What Is a Photography Studio and How Is It Used When Taking Photographs? A photography studio is a workspace specifically designed and built for the purpose of taking photographs. In it’s basic form a studio will feature a well lit space with a blank backdrop to allow the capturing of images in an environment free from obtrusive external light sources. The required lighting for an image can then be ‘built’ by the photographer using lighting equipment and subject placement. Professional photography studios are jam packed with the most expensive photography, lighting and editing equipment, providing photographer with all the equipment and …

Subject Distance

What Does the Term Subject Distance Mean When Talking About Photography? In photography subject distance is the distance between the focal plane of a camera and the subject being photographed. Knowing the subject distance of a scene can be extremely useful when choosing the correct equipment required to capture an image; When working with subjects at close distances it is extremely important to choose a lens with an MFD which is less than the subject distance (providing the subject will be the object of focus). In this situation a lens with an MFD greater than the subject distance will not …

Test Shots

What Is a Test Shot and How Is It Used in Photography? In photography a ‘Test Shot’ or series of test shots refer to photographs that are taken at the beginning of a photoshoot to determine the correct exposure, depth of field, and lighting levels required to capture a specific pre-determined set of final images. Often if a model is to feature in the final image or images then a stand-in will be used for test-shots (usually an assistant) so that a scene can be set without having to pay a model. Once test shots have been captured the photographer …

Thumbnail Index

What Is a Thumbnail Index and how Is It used in Photography? A thumbnail index is an index of images comprised of thumbnails; reduced size versions of images designed to give you an ‘at a glance’ idea of an images contents. Thumbnail indexes usually replace text indexes in cameras and image editing software because of the practicality of searching visually when working with photographs. Thumbnail indexes will often contain a small amount of metadata which can be used alongside the thumbnails to quickly identify images in libraries that can sometimes contain hundreds of thousands of individual images. Thumbnail indexes can …

Tonal Range

What Do We Mean by ‘Tonal Range’ When Talking AboutPhotographs and Photography? In photography, the term ‘Tonal Range’ also sometimes referred to as ‘Dynamic Range’ is used to describe he quality of color and tone within an image, ranging from the darkest to brightest area and everything in between. In digital photography the tonal range of an image is dependant on the dynamic range of the sensor capturing the image. It should be noted however that it is not difficult to capture a full tonal range of black to white, the challenge comes in representing the tones in between which …

Underexposure

What Does Underexposure Mean When Talking About Photography? If too little light is recorded when capturing an image the image is said to be ‘underexposed’; The imaging medium i.e. film, or sensor has not been exposed to light for long enough to capture a sufficiently bright image. Underexposure of an entire image occurs when the combination of shutter speed, aperture and ISO chosen to capture an image have not been chosen correctly by the shooter, or metered correctly by the camera. Underexposure in dark areas of some scenes is unavoidable if the dynamic range being captured is too high, for …

Unsharp Masking

What Is Unsharp Masking and How Is It Used When Editing Photos? Unsharp masking is a techniques used when editing photographs to remove blurriness from an image. The name may initially appear confusing because it would appear to suggest the removal of sharpness, but is derived from the fact that the technique uses a blurred or ‘unsharp’ negative of an image as a mask to increase sharpness. the technique can be traced back to 1930’s Germany where the process involved the creation of a physical second negative of an image. The advent of digital photography and powerful image editing software however …

Zoom

What Does Zoom Mean When Talking About Photography? In Photography to zoom is to make the subject of a photograph appear closer than its actual distance (or subject distance) from the focal plane of a camera. Zooming is achieved either optically, using an arrangement of lenses to manipulate the light entering the camera, thus making the subject appear closer, or digitally by cropping an image to make the subject appear closer than it really is. In nearly all situations optical zoom is preferable to digital zoom as the latter will result in a reduction in the resolution of the image …