Macro Lens

What Is a Macro Lens Used for When Taking Photographs? A macro lens is lens designed for macro, or close-up photography. Macro lenses feature extremely small minimum focusing distances meaning they are capable of focusing on objects that are extremely close to the lens. A good Macro lens should feature a 1:1 magnification ratio for taking highly detailed, life sized images of subjects. Macro lenses use optical formula specifically designed to render close objects in extreme detail and as such are not particularly versatile; Due to the small minimum focusing distances macro lenses have an extremely narrow depth of field, …

Read more

Macro Photography

What Does Macro Photography Mean When Talking About Taking Photos? The term ‘macro photography’ describes the art of taking close-up photographs of subjects. Traditionally for a photograph to be considered a true macro photograph the subject should be rendered  as life-sized or larger than life-sized. A lot of modern cameras feature a ‘macro mode’ which allows the camera to achieve focus on an object at extremely short distances, but this generally doesn’t allow for the minimum 1:1 magnification ratio required for a true macro photograph. True macro photography requires the use of a macro lens which combines high levels of …

Read more

Macro Rail

What Is A Macro Rail? A macro rail is a mechanical rail system that allows you to move a camera fore and aft, or left and right, in extremely small and precise movements.  Depth of field can be incredibly thin when working at close distances with a macro lens.  Precise focus can be tricky to achieve, but with a macro rail, and the help of live view, it’s easy to fine tune the exact point of focus.  A system of gears ensures that you have incredibly precise and repeatable control.  Given the shallow depths of field in macro photography, focus …

Read more

Magnetic Storage

What Is Magnetic Storage When Talking About Photography? When talking about photography, magnetic storage refers to a form of storage in which information is recorded on a magnetised plate within a storage device. The data is stored by applying different levels of magnetism to different areas of a magnetic plate using a write head. This information can then be read at a later time by a read head which can measure the levels of magnetism applied to the plate. Magnetic storage is non-volatile and can be found in the hard drives which you use to store your digital images. Magnetic …

Read more

Manual Mode

What Is Manual Mode For On A Camera? Manual mode on a camera allows the photographer to determine the exposure of an image by letting them select an aperture value and a shutter speed value.  This give you ultimate control over the look of the photo, but you must have a deep understanding of exposure, and how shutter speed and aperture affect it. When most people start out with photography, they let the camera work out the correct exposure in a fully automatic mode.  On a DSLR, this mode is often labelled with a P, for “Program”.  As knowledge of …

Read more

Masking

What Is Masking and How Is It Used When Editing Photos? When talking about editing and processing images the term ‘masking’ refers to the practice of using a mask to protect a specific area of an image, just as you would use masking tape when painting your house. Masking an area of an image protects that area from being altered by changes made to the rest of the image. Using masks in image editing allows you to preserve portions of an image that you are satisfied with whilst simultaneously altering aspects of the rest of the image such as overall …

Read more

Maximum Aperture

What Does Maximum Aperture Mean When Talking about Photography? When talking about photography and more specifically photographic lenses, the term ‘maximum aperture’ describes the widest hole that can be formed by the aperture blades within a lens. At it’s maximum aperture a lens will allow a lot of light to enter the camera, therefore allowing the use of faster shutter speeds when capturing images; Lenses with large maximum apertures, for example f/1.4 are therefore often referred to as ‘fast lenses’. The trade off when using a lens’ maximum aperture is that images will be softer and have a very narrow …

Read more

MB

What Is an MB and How Is It Used in Photography? The acronym MB stands for ‘megabyte’ and refers to a unit of measurement used to describe the size of a digital file. One MB is comprised of 1,024,000 bytes, or 1,024 kilobytes of digital information. When a picture is captured on a digital camera the resulting file must be stored on the cameras memory; Depending of the resolution of the captured image, and the file format used to encode it, an image will take up a certain number of MB on the cameras memory. Dividing the total size of …

Read more

Medium Format

What Is Medium Format When Talking About Photography? In photography the term ‘medium format’ refers to a type of film or digital image sensor that is larger than 35mm ‘full-frame’, but smaller than 4″x5″ ‘large format’.  the majority of medium format film is produced in what is known as ‘120 roll’ measuring 6cm x 6cm. Medium format cameras are favoured by some photographers due to their extremely high image quality, often seeing use in military intelligence applications.  Traditionally medium format cameras are much larger than their 35mm counterparts but 2016 saw the release of the relatively small Hasselblad X1D, the …

Read more

Megabyte

What Is a Megabyte and How Is It Used in Photography? the term ‘megabyte’ or MB refers to a unit of measurement used to describe the size of a digital file. One megabyte is comprised of 1,024,000 bytes, or 1,024 kilobytes of digital information. When a picture is captured on a digital camera the resulting file must be stored on the cameras memory; Depending of the resolution of the captured image, and the file format used to encode it, an image will take up a certain number of megabytes on the cameras memory. Dividing the total size of a camera’s …

Read more