Digital Camera Terms To Know
It helps when learning to use your new digital camera to also know what some of the more common terms mean.
Automatic Mode — A setting that sets the focus, exposure and white-balance automatically.
Burst Mode or Continuous Capture Mode — a series of pictures taken one after another at quickly timed intervals with one press of the shutter button.
Compression — The process of compacting digital data, images and text by deleting selected information.
Digital Zoom — Cropping and magnifying the middle part of an image.
JPEG — The main format used for image compression in digital cameras
Lag Time — The delay between the time the shutter button is pressed and when the camera actually captures the image
LCD — (Liquid-Crystal Display) is a small screen on a digital camera for viewing images.
Lens — A circular and transparent glass or plastic piece that has the function of collecting light and focusing it on the sensor to capture the image.
Megabyte — (MB) refers to the amount of information in a file, or how much information can be contained on a Memory Card, Hard Drive or Disk.
Pixels — Tiny units of color that make up digital pictures. Pixels also measure digital resolution. One million pixels adds up to one mega-pixel.
RGB — Refers to Red, Green and Blue colors used on computers to create all other colors.
Resolution — Camera resolution describes the number of pixels used to create the image, which determines the amount of detail a camera can capture. The more pixels a camera has, the more detail it can register and the larger the picture can be printed.
Storage Card — The removable storage device which holds images taken with the camera, comparable to film, but much smaller
Viewfinder — The optical “window” to look through to compose the scene.
White Balance — White balancing adjusts the camera to compensate for the type of light or lighting conditions in the scene so it will look normal to the human eye.
