AF
What does it mean when a camera or lens has the letters AF on the side of it? Click through to find out in our photography dictionary.
Topic: Acronyms
Puzzled by strange photography acronyms or abbreviations? You’ve come to the right place!
The complete Shutter Muse Photography Glossary lists and explains the most commonly used terms in photography and you can find that glossary right here. This is the best place for beginner photographers to start to familiarize themselves with the photography lingo while they are exploring tutorials, reading books and learning photography software. A lot of the time, we can also give you a link to a more in-depth article on the topic if you’d really like to sink your teeth into it!
This page you are on right now only lists the photography acronyms and abbreviations from within the full glossary because sometimes that’s all people are looking for.
If you’ve seen something missing that you’d like us to explain, please send us a note via the suggestion form and again, you can find the full glossary here.
AL
What Does AL Mean In Photography? AL is an abbreviation of Aspherical Lens and is often used by the manufacturer, Pentax. Please see the aspherical lens definition page for more details. Additional Reading
ASP
ASP Lens Definition ASP is an abbreviation for Aspherical Lens and is used by the manufacturer Sigma, to denote lenses which contain an aspherical lens element. Please see the aspherical lens definition page for more details on this optical type. Additional Reading
ASPH
ASPH Lens Definition ASPH is an abbreviation of Aspherical Lens and is used by the manufacturer, Leica to denote lenses that contain an aspherical lens element. Please see the aspherical lens definition page for more details on this optical type.
BBF
What is the meaning of BBF when people are talking about photography and camera autofocus settings?
CFWA
CFWA stands for Close Focus Wide Angle, and it typically used to describe a technique that is popular with underwater photographers. The idea is to use a lens that allows extremely close focusing, but still shoot with a relatively wide angle in order to take in the surrounding underwater landscape. Popular lenses for this technique would be the Canon 8-15 fisheye, the Nikkor 8-15 fisheye or the Tokina 10-17. In the example CFWA photo at the top of the page, you can see from the image’s edge distortion that the photo was taken with a fisheye lens. The central coral …
CN-E
What Is A Canon CN-E Lens? When Canon launched the Cinema EOS camera line for professional video applications, they needed a lens lineup to compliment the cameras. Cinema lens are designed quite differently to stills camera lenses, so the Canon CN-E lens lineup was born to cater to that market. Canon’s CN-E prime lenses are available with an EF mount, whilst the CN-E zoom lenses are available in either EF or PL mount. The biggest visual difference between EF and CN-E lenses, is that the cinema lenses have gearing around them that allows the focus and aperture to be easily …
DAM
What Does DAM Mean? DAM stands for Digital Asset Management and in relation to photography, it describes everything we do with our image files from the moment we begin to download them from the memory card or camera. DAM encompasses: When people are talking about DAM and photography, these are the most likely topics. Management of digital images is not a topic to take lightly, especially backing up your files and applying some basic metadata to help you find them in the future. With the invention of digital photography, we have the means to capture thousands of images in a …
DO
What Is A DO Lens? The DO lettering seen on some Canon lenses stands for Diffractive Optics. You can spot a DO lens by the bright green ring around the front of the lens barrel, in a similar way to the red rings seen around Canon’s L-Series lenses. All lenses consists of a number of smaller glass elements within the lens barrel and Diffractive Optics is a technology that allows them to use considerably less optical elements in a lens design. They do this by bending the light much more with DO lens elements than they typically do with regular …
EF-M
What Is An EF-M Lens? With the launch of the Canon EOS M mirrorless system in 2013, came the EF-M mount. A mount that allowed Canon engineers to create a smaller line of lenses that complimented the smaller body size of the EOS M series mirrorless cameras with APS-C sensors. There is an EF to EF-M adapter which allows you to use EF or EF-S lenses on an EF-M mount camera, and still maintain full electronic control and autofocus. There is not, however, an RF to EF-M adapter, so it’s not possible to use EF-M lenses at all on Canon’s …