N Archives - Shutter Muse

Narrow Lighting

What Is Narrow Lighting and How Is It Used When Taking Photographs? Narrow lighting is a lighting technique commonly used in portrait photography, and is used to control how wide a subject appears to the viewer. For the technique to work the main light source of a scene must be illuminating the side of the subjects face which is facing away from the camera, doing so places the side of the nose facing the camera in shadow which creates the illusion of the subject being narrower in appearance. Narrow lighting can be achieved by careful placement of supplementary light sources or …

Natural Light

What Is Natural Light and How Can It Be Used When Taking Photographs? Depending on the scene you are shooting ‘Natural light’ can be your best friend, or your worst enemy. The term natural light refers to any natural sources of light illumination a scene i.e. any light that is not artificially created. The most obvious source of ambient light is the Sun, at sunrise and sunset it will bring a scene alive with warm tones punctuated by subtle shadows and soft detail, at high noon it will wash out your photographs with overwhelming highlights and deep impenetrable shadows. the …

ND

What Does ND Stand for in Photography? ND stands for neutral density and is used to describe a type of photographic filter that diminishes the amount of light transmission through a lens. A neutral density filter is designed to be as close to color-neutral as possible, so the only effect that it should have is to cut down the amount of light that is hitting your camera’s sensor or film. You might want to do this in order be able to use a wider aperture on a sunny day, to maintain a shallow depth of field, or you might do …

Neutral Density Filter

What Is a Neutral Density Filter in Photography? A filter used in front of the lens that absorbs all visible wavelengths and significantly reduces the amount of light that reaches the sensor. Neutral density filters are particularly useful in situations where excess ambient light does not allow you to use the shutter speed and aperture you require to achieve a desired photographic effect. One example would be photographing daytime seascapes where you wish to use a long exposure time to allow blurring of the water to create a sense of dynamic movement. F-Stop Reduction Optical Density Filter Factor % …

NiCad

What Does NiCad Mean and How Is It Related to Cameras and Photography? When talking about cameras and photography equipment NiCad is the name given to a common type of rechargeable battery. NiCad batteries were one of the first successful standards of rechargeable batteries used in digital cameras. NiCad stands for ‘nickel-cadium’ and relates to the materials used within the battery to provide an electrical output. Nikel-cadium batteries have now widely been superseded by NiMH batteries which typically hold two or three times the charge capacity of their NiCad counterparts. NiCad batteries are however still available for equipment originally designed …

Nifty fifty

What does Nifty Fifty mean when talking about cameras and photography? The term ‘nifty fifty’ is a photography colloquialism for a cheap 50mm prime lens, usually with a maximum aperture of f/1.8 or faster. Lenses in this range are fast, lightweight and extremely versatile for street and portrait photography. The ‘nifty’ feature is the price; These f/1.8 and f/1.4 50mm lenses often have a relatively simple optical formula with fewer elements than their more complex counterparts. This makes a ‘nifty fifty’ one best value pieces of glass you can add to your kit as a beginner who is looking to …

NiMH

What Does NiMH Mean and How Is It Related to Cameras and Photography? When talking about modern cameras the acronym NiMH is the name given to a common type of rechargeable battery found in many digital cameras and flash units. NiMH stands for ‘nickel-metal hydrate’ and relates to the materials used within the battery to provide an electrical output. NiMH batteries typically have two or three times the charge capacity of their NiCad counterparts making them an excellent choice for power sapping equipment such as speedlights. NiMH batteries are available in common battery sizes such as AAA or AAA and …

Non-Volatile Memory

What Is Non-Volatile Memory and How Is It Used in Photography? Non-volatile memory is a type of memory that is not erased when the system within which it is contained is powered down. As such non-volatile memory makes an excellent medium for long-term storage of digital data. Volatile memory such as RAM is the other primary type of memory and is erased when powered down. As a photographer you will encounter types of non-volatile memory all the time; the computer hard drives, SD and Compact Flash memory cards that photographs are stored on are all forms of non-volatile memory, digital …

Normal Lens

What Is a Normal Lens and How Is It Used When Taking Photos? A ‘normal lens’ is a Lens with a focal length approximately equal to the diagonal of the film format or of a digital camera’s image sensor. A scene viewed through a normal lens appears to have the same perspective as the way your eye sees it. Most 35mm cameras normal lenses have a focal length of approximately 50 mm. Normal lenses are extremely popular with street photographers because the perspective captured in an image shot with a normal lens will be extremely true to life, having the effect …

NTSC

What Is NTSC and How Does It Relate to Photography and Video? NTSC is an analogue video standard widely used in the Americas and Japan before the coming of the digital television era. Named after the ‘National Television System Committee’ NTSC dates back to 1941 when the first black and white NTSC system was implemented, NTSC color followed in 1953. The NTSC standard features a refresh rate of 30 frames per second, with each frame being composed of two fields consisting of 262.5 scan lines. NTSC was extremely popular until the late 1990’s when it began to be superseded by …