L Archives - Shutter Muse

L-Series

What Is A Canon L Series Lens? Canon’s high-end lenses carry a red ring around the lens barrel, and the famous L Series branding. These lenses are designed for professional usage and are built to the highest standards, with extreme sharpness and durability in mind. Most L lenses are weather sealed, meaning they can stand to get reasonably wet before requiring a waterproof cover. L Series lenses cover the full spectrum of focal lengths, from the incredible groundbreaking 11-24mm f/4 L, right through to the 800mm f/5.6 L IS. Compared to Canon’s other lenses, L Series lenses tend to focus …

Lag Time

What Is Lag Time? Lag time in photography is more often referred to as shutter lag. For a detailed description of what shutter lag is, and why it’s important, please view the shutter lag glossary entry. Additional Reading

landscape

What Is a Landscape When Talking About Taking Photographs? A ‘landscape’ is a specific type of photograph of the land and its surrounding natural features from a single viewpoint. Scenery is the subject of a landscape image. Landscape images are traditionally captured using wide angle lenses set for maximum depth of field, this gives an image a sense of scale. Tripods and long exposure techniques are often used when taking landscape photographs as the narrow apertures required to maximize sharpness and depth of field necessitate the use of long exposure times. Medium format and large format cameras are sometimes used …

Large Format

What Is a Large Format Camera When Talking About Photography? When talking about cameras and photography the term ‘large format’ refers to a camera which records images in a format larger than 4 x 5 inches. The main advantage of large format cameras is their incredible image resolution. A 4 X 5 inch image has roughly 16 times the image area of that produced by a 35mm camera and therefore 16 times the total image resolution. 4 x 5 inches is the most common large format but cameras have been produced which capture images anywhere up to 20 x 24 …

Latent Image

What Does Latent Image Mean When Talking About Photography? When talking about photography the term ‘latent image’ refers to the invisible image created on a photographic film when the film is exposed to light. The image only becomes visible to the naked eye once the photographic film has been removed from the camera and chemically developed. The latent image is formed by silver atoms clustered on the surface of, or within the silver halide crystals which are in turn coated on the surface of the photographic film. The term latent image has no direct meaning when talking about digital photography.

Lens Coating

What Is a Lens Coating When Talking About Photography? When talking photography and optical lenses a ‘lens coating’ is a coating that is applied to the surface of a lens element which is designed to reduce light reflection and increase light transmission within the lens. Lens coatings are used by lens manufacturers to produce optics that can render an image with the least unwanted optical degradation. The application of lens coatings can be extremely complex and costly, therefore complex multi-layer coatings are normally only found on expensive lenses. One example is the Zeiss T* coating, a multi-coat anti-reflective technology which …

Lens Collar

What Is A Lens Collar? A lens collar is another name for a tripod collar. Please click through to the tripod collar page for a more detailed description of what it is, what it does and why you might want to use one. Additional Reading

Leveling Head

What is a Leveling Head on a Tripod? A leveling head is something that sits between your tripod head and a tripod, to help you level the head extremely quickly. Without a leveling head it can be tedious and time-consuming to perfectly level a tripod by adjusting the length of the individual legs. For normal photographic purposes, you don’t actually need a perfectly level tripod because you can simply use the ball head of your tripod to level the camera. The difficulty arises when you need a camera to rotate. If the tripod isn’t perfectly level when you rotate a …

Light Meter

What Is a Light Meter and How Is It Used When Taking Photographs? A ‘light meter’ is a handheld device that used measure or ‘meter’ light. A light meter can read the ambient light in a scene, or the direct light from a light source and calculate the correct shutter speed and aperture values required to capture an accurate exposure. These days nearly all cameras have built in light meters and a number of metering ‘modes’ to calculate exposure settings. A handheld light meter might be used when shooting with older photography equipment or when scouting a location before shooting …

Light Painting

What Is Light Painting and How Is It Used in Photography? A ‘light painting’ is an image that is created by capturing a long exposure of a dark scene that contains a moving light source. By moving the light source within the scene whilst the photographic medium is being exposed the photographer is able to produce an effect which resembles the brush strokes made by an artist’s paint brush, only composed entirely of light. A classic example of a light painting is writing your name using a sparkler at a firework display. Light Paintings can be created by capturing any …