Light Meter: Photography Vocabulary 101

There are words and acronyms that relate solely to photography and videography. Sometimes people aren’t aware of them or certain of what they mean. Allow me to explain this fantastic language to you and for fun, toss in some common mistakes that make us giggle.

Point and Shoot – A camera that is compact regardless as to whether it is digital, 35mm or APS. One may pick up the camera set to Auto, aim at the subject and depress the shutter release button, hence the term point and shoot. Examples: Canon PowerShot SD750 Digital Elph, Minolta Freedom Zoom 130, FujiFilm FinePix S5700.
Street reference: PHD – Push Here Dummy

SLR (Single-lens Reflex)– A camera be it film or digital that accepts a variety of lenses enabling the user to create an endless variety of images. With an SLR one can take complete control over the camera. Through the lens viewing lets you see exactly what your photo will look like. Examples: Nikon N80, Pentax K1000, Canon Digital Rebel XSi

Disposable Camera – A compact plastic camera designed to be used once, developed, and disposed of or recycled. The camera may be 35mm or digital. A variety of 35mm offerings include: underwater, black and white, panoramic, and zoom.
Street references: One-time use and throw away.

One-time Use Camcorder – A low resolution camcorder with a LCD screen that allows you to film for 20 minutes. The camcorders are returned to a lab to have the footage transferred to a DVD. The camcorders are generally recycled and sold again. Street references: Disposable camcorder and throw away video camera.

Megapixels – Technically, it is a unit of graphic resolution. It’s the number of image sensor elements in the digital camera’s sensor. Each megapixel is one million pixels. The more pixels in a camera, the larger the file size is, which assists in creating better quality photos and enables prints in bigger sizes.
Mistakenly called megaplexes and megapickles.

LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) – Each camcorder and digital camera has an LCD screen. On a camcorder, it flips out so you can watch what you are filming while walking. On a digital point and shoot it is a live screen as well so you can watch what you’re doing and see the photo right after you take it. Both film and digital SLR cameras’ LCDs offer technical information such as the shutterspeed, aperature, metering and so forth.

All photos Copyrights belong to the manufacturers. Images used for Educational purposes.