Hair Light

What Is A Hair Light In Photography? A hair light is a lighting term that means the same thing as “rim light”. Please see the rim light glossary terms for more details on why you might want to use a rim light/hair light and exactly what it does. Additional Reading

Halo

What Is a Halo in Photography and Image Editing? If you’ve heard the term “halo” discussed in the context of photo editing, you might be wondering what it means. No, it’s not a ring of light around a person’s head in a photo! A halo is a bright line that can appear in areas of high contrast on a photo when the photo has been subjected to very heavy amounts of editing, particularly HDR editing. An example of a high contrast area would be a dark mountain on a bright sky. The area where the sky meets the mountains is …

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Handgrip

What is a Handgrip on a Camera? The handgrip is a protrusion on the right-hand side of a camera that is ergonomically shaped to be comfortable when held in the hand. This is almost always the primary contact point between the photographer and their camera, so it is sized to make it large enough to grip and hold the weight of the camera. As such, the size of a camera’s handgrip is highly dependant on the weight of the camera. Larger cameras tend to have larger handgrips to make them easier to hold. Small point and shoot cameras barely have …

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HDTV

What Does HDTV Mean in Camera Specifications? HDTV stands for High Definition Television and you might sometimes see this acronym listed amongst the technical jargon in camera specifications. An HDTV is a television with a 16:9 aspect ratio (compared to the older 4:3 aspect ratio) that can display a resolution of at least 720p (1280px x 720px). Most HDTVs either display a resolution of 720p or 1080p (1920px x 1080px), but some newer televisions are now capable of displaying what is commonly known as 4k or Quad HD (4096px x 2160px) – also sometimes written as QFHD (Quad Full HD) …

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Hot Shoe Flash

What Is A Hot Shoe Flash? A hot shoe flash is a flash that can be triggered to fire with the camera’s shutter when it is inserted into a standard hotshoe on top of a camera. The hotshoe from most camera manufacturers allows two-way communication between camera and flash for adjusting the power and the other settings on the flash. A hot shoe flash does not have to be in a hot shoe for it to operate though, they can also be triggered by using radio slaves such as PocketWizards, which can be connected to external hot shoe cables. These …

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