B Archives - Shutter Muse

Back Button Focus

What Is Back Button Focus? Back button focus is a focus technique often used by professional photographers who want to independently control their camera’s autofocus and shutter. By default, cameras usually activate autofocus when you press the shutter button, but there are many instances where it is actually preferable to separate these two controls into two different buttons. This is a very important technique that can improve both image sharpness and compositions, so long as you understand why and when you would want to use it. To expand on this from the simple glossary entry, I have written an in-depth …

Battery Grip

What Is A Battery Grip? A battery grip is an accessory that attaches to the bottom a camera and duplicates several of the primary camera buttons, while also increasing the camera’s battery life. The grip makes it more comfortable to hold the camera in this vertical orientation, and also provides easier access to important buttons such as the shutter button, AF-ON button for back button focus technique, as well as control wheels and autofocus joysticks. In general, the battery grip for a specific camera will perfectly mimic the buttons and the button positions as they are found on the camera …

BBF

What is the meaning of BBF when people are talking about photography and camera autofocus settings?

Bokeh

What Does Bokeh Mean When Talking About Taking Photographs? When talking about photographs the term ‘Bokeh’ refers to the quality of out of focus elements of an image. When taking a photograph you may not even think of the quality of the out of focus areas, but good bokeh, often appearing as smooth circular shaped objects in the out-of-focus areas of an image can dramatically improve the overall feel of a picture. The Quality of the bokeh in an image is often determined by the lens used to capture the image. Lenses that use an apodization element produce particularly soft …

Bounce Flash

What Is Bounce Flash? Bounce flash is light from a flash that has been bounced off another surface before it gets to the subject. Most commonly, this refers to light that is bounced off a wall or ceiling from a hotshoe mounted flash, but it could be light from any kind of flash or strobe, bounced from any surface. On-camera flash, whether is is from a built-in flash or a hotshoe flash, is not great for photography. It fills in the shadows on the same axis as the camera lens and this creates a flat looking image that can be …

Bulb Mode

What Is Bulb Mode? When selecting the shutter speed on a camera, almost all cameras are limited to shutter speeds up to 30 seconds long (see shutter speed chart). If you want to shoot a photo which has an exposure time of longer than 30 seconds, you need to use bulb mode. Many cameras have a “B” setting on the mode dial next to the “M” for manual, and this indicates bulb mode. Sometimes a camera might give access to bulb mode when yo try to change your shutter speed past the 30 second mark as well. Again, if you …

Burst Rate

What Does Burst Rate Mean In A Camera? When you camera is set in continuous shooting mode, it will continue to shoot photos as long as you hold down the shutter button. The speed at which it takes the photos is known as FPS, or Frames Per Second. Before photos get written to the memory card, they are first stored to a small amount of internal memory in the camera called a buffer. This buffer memory has a very fast write speed, faster than a regular memory card which is why they do this. Once stored in the buffer, the …