/ Archives - Page 4 of 7

Multi-Pattern Metering

What Is Multi-Pattern Metering and What Is It Used for When Taking Photographs? ‘Multi-pattern metering’ refers to a metering mode selectable on a camera which is designed to meter a scene accurately in challenging lighting situations. Multi-pattern metering reads light levels in multiple areas or ‘zones’ within a scene and compares the results to calculate exposure settings that will produce the clearest exposure of in focus areas. Multi-pattern metering is particularly useful in challenging lighting situations, for example backlit subjects. In this situation multi-pattern metering can ‘sense’ the difference in light between the subject and background and compensate for a …

Multi-Point Focusing

What Is Multi-Point Focusing and How Is It Used in Photography? Modern cameras often have multiple focus points spread across an active area of the cameras frame. This allows a photographer to compose a scene and then select the single focus point closest to the position to the scene subject, or alternatively to focus on the subject using the center focus point and then recompose. Multi-point focusing allows the shooter to select a starting focus point, but the camera will automatically track a subject within a frame as they move, thus utilizing multiple focus points. This technique is particularly handy …

Multi-Zone Focusing

What Is Multi-Zone Focusing and How Is It Used When Taking Photos? ‘Multi-Zone focusing’ is an auto focusing mode which determines which zone within a scene (center, upper left, right, lower left, right) should be used for determining an images focus point. Multi-zone focusing is often used in point and shoot cameras to determine where in a frame the image subject is, the camera will then perform auto focusing based on a point in the zone within which it determines the subject is located. Multi-zone focusing is not always completely accurate, often becoming confused when a scene contains multiple objects …

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 …

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 …

Opacity

What Does Opacity Mean When Talking About Photography? Opacity is the measure of an objects impenetrability to electromagnetic radiation. When talking about photography the term is used to describes exactly how much an object blocks light from passing through it. An object that completely blocks light is called opaque, no light is able to pass through it. The opposite of opaque is transparent. Many opaque objects will reflect light which can be problematic when taking photos. Knowing the opacity of objects is also very important when designing lenses; lens elements despite very low opacity values will still block small amounts …

ORF

What Is and ORF File and How Is It Used in Photography and Image Editing? The acronym ORF stands for ‘Olympus RAW file’ and is Olympus’ proprietary version of a RAW photographic file. As such an ORF file contains only uncompressed or lossless photographic data with no editing. ORF files are what are captured on a compatible Olympus camera when a photographer wants to capture the highest levels of photographic information for manipulation in post-processing. ORF files are compatible with Olympus’ own image editing software and major editing suites such as Photoshop using the ORF plug-in. Due to the amount …

Orientation Sensor

What Is an Orientation Sensor and How Is Is Used in a Camera? When talking about modern cameras an ‘orientation sensor’ is a sensor within a camera which can detect when a photographer switches the camera from a landscape to a portrait orientation. An orientation sensor us usually a type of basic accelerometer which can only detect major changes in orientation. They allow camera display information to be rotated to remain readable by the shooter regardless of whether they are holding the camera vertically of horizontally. Orientation sensors are also used during image playback to allow the user to switch …

Palette

What Does Palette Mean When Talking About Photography and Image Editing? Also referred to as ‘color palette’ the term ‘palette’ describes the entire range of colors that can be rendered by a digital device such as a camera LCD or a computer monitor. A computer monitor may have a color palette of 16 million colors, an image on the other hand often contains a much smaller number, typically 256. The term is also used to describe a collection of colors, usually displayed graphically in RGB triplets, which a user can select when editing images and re-touching photos. A palette, or …

Parfocal

What Does Parfocal Mean When Talking About Camera Lenses? When talking about photography and photographic lenses a ‘parfocal’ lens is a zoom lens that maintains focus when the focal length of the lens is altered. The opposite of a parfocal lens is a ‘varifocal’ lens. Parfocal lenses are extremely convenient because they allow a photographer to quickly alter their perspective of a scene without having to refocus. The advent of autofocus lenses and digital cameras has somewhat overcome the problems caused by using varifocal lenses as camera software is able to quickly and automatically refocus an image when lens focal …