The world of photography is full of terms and phrases that can be confusing for new photographers, so PetaPixel has put together a complete glossary of everything you may want to know the meaning of if you’re just getting started.
C
Cable Release. A cable that plugs into a camera on one end and which has a shutter button on the other. It is used to remotely trigger the shutter of the camera without the photographer having to touch the camera itself, eliminating the issue of vibrations that reduce image sharpness. Useful when shooting long exposure photos, particularly in bulb mode.
Camera Body. Refers to the main physical device that is used to capture photos. While it can have a built-in lens, it generally refers to a camera itself without an attached lens. While camera bodies were purely mechanical devices in earlier periods of photography and during the age of photographic film, modern digital camera bodies also contain high-tech electronics, digital displays, and silicon image sensors.
Camera Obscura. Latin for “dark chamber,” this was originally a dark room that had a hole or lens that allowed light from the outside world to be projected onto an inner wall or surface. While the color and perspective of the outdoor scene are the same in the projected image, the image itself is inverted upside-down and reversed left and right. The term camera obscura is also used to refer to smaller constructed spaces or boxes that operate with the same principle. By adding a light-sensitive surface to a camera obscura, a photo can be made using the projection, thereby turning the camera obscura into a camera.
Camera Shake. The unintentional movement of a camera during the exposure of a photograph, generally resulting in a photo that is less sharp and more blurry than desired. This can be caused by unsteady hands when shooting handheld, the force of pressing the shutter button, or environmental causes such as wind blowing a tripod-mounted camera. The combination of using a remote shutter release and a sturdy tripod can greatly reduce or eliminate camera shake.
Candid Photograph. Any photograph captured without the subject(s) in the frame posing for the image. A photographer aiming to create photos in this style will generally capture unplanned moments in life as it occurs without stopping or directing the people being photographed. Subjects may or may not be aware of the photos being made.
Catchlight. A light source that appears as a specular highlight in a subject’s eyes. Photographers commonly use a light’s positions and settings for this end result, transforming eyes from having a flat and lifeless appearance to having a glint that adds a spark of life.
CCD Sensor. A charge-coupled device sensor is one of the two major types of semiconductor image sensors, with the other being CMOS. Advantages typically include a global shutter (all pixels are exposed at the same time), high resolution/sensitivity (due to pixels not having to share space with the amplifiers), and high-quality/low-noise. Disadvantages include high power consumption and high cost (a special manufacturing process is needed).
Chimping. The colloquial term used to refer to the act of bringing a camera — generally a DSLR — away from the eye after every exposure to review the resulting photo immediately on the rear display. Although the term is often used in a derogatory sense, frequently reviewing photos after they are captured to check things like settings, exposure, and composition. Mirrorless cameras allow photos to be reviewed immediately within the electronic viewfinder itself, eliminating the need to “chimp.”
Chromatic Aberration Also called “color fringing,” this is a color distortion that occurs when a lens fails to focus all colors to the same point. It appears as an outline or fridge of color in areas of an image where there is high contrast between light and dark objects.
Cinemagraph Coined by photographers Kevin Burg and Jamie Beck in 2011, this is a still photo that contains looping movement in a particular minor portion of the image. The result is what looks like a still photograph that has subtle motion that helps bring it to life. The name refers to the combination of a moving picture (cinema) with a still picture (photograph).
Circular Polarizer Filter Abbreviated CP or CPL, this is a type of filter that attaches to a lens and cuts down on glare and reflections. Photographers may employ it when shooting things like water, glass, foliage, and cloudy skies. The front part of the filter can be rotated to control the polarization effect.
Clipping The loss of information that occurs when highlights are overexposed or shadows are underexposed in a photo, resulting in regions that are captured as pure white or pure black, respectively, without any detail. Histograms can be used in cameras and software to identify and avoid clipping. Photo processing and editing programs also commonly have clipping indicators to help photographers easily identify areas where information is being discarded.
CMOS Sensor A complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor sensor is the dominant type of image sensor found in modern digital cameras (the other being CCD). Advantages include readout speed, low power consumption, and low cost (it uses traditional chipmaking processes). Disadvantages include rolling shutter (pixels are exposed line by line) and lower sensitivity (each pixel site shares space with an amplifier).
Cold Shoe. A bracket designed to hold a camera flash or other accessory. While a hot shoe has electrical contacts that allow a camera to communicate with the accessory (e.g. fire a flash unit), a cold shoe does not contain electronics and therefore is used solely for mounting an accessory and holding it in place.
Compact Camera. Another name for the point-and-shoot camera.
Composite Photograph. A photo that is the result of combining two or more different photos into a single image that is blended in some way. Creating a realistic and/or seamless composite generally requires a great deal of both skill and time.
Composition. How the visual elements in a photo are arranged within the frame. Paying careful attention to how a subject and scene are framed allows the photographer to capture an image that can do things such as direct the viewers’ eyes, be more visually appealing, tell a story, elicit a feeling or emotion, and more. There are various “rules of thumb” that aid beginning photographers in creating good compositions.
Computational Photography. The use of algorithms, AI, and computer processing to enhance or manipulate images, producing results that go beyond what traditional photography can create with light, lenses, sensors, and physics. Computational photography has become increasingly important in the age of smartphone cameras due to the size constraints of the lenses and sensors, though its technologies are being applied to standalone cameras as well.
Continuous Shooting. Another name for burst mode.
Contrast. The difference between a certain aspect of elements in a photo. This could be the tonal contrast between the lightest tones and the darkest tones in an image, or it could be the color contrast between opposing colors in the frame.
Contrast Detection Autofocus. A common camera autofocus method that uses the contrast between edges in a scene to achieve sharp focus. Since the contrast of two side-by-side pixels should increase if focus increases, the camera simply adjusts the lens’s focus back and forth until maximal contrast is settled upon.
Copyright. The legal ownership of a creative work. A form of intellectual property that gives the creator the exclusive right, for the duration of the copyright, to copy and distribute the work they have created. A photographer automatically owns the copyright immediately after they shoot a photo, but there are advantages to officially registering your works with the US Copyright Office.
Copyright Infringement. When a copyrighted photograph or any other creative work is reproduced, distributed, performed, publicly displayed, or made into a new derivative work without the permission of the owner of the copyright. In the photo industry, this is often when a photographer’s photo is published online or used for commercial purposes such as advertising without that photographer’s permission.
Cropping. The act of removing unwanted outer edge portions of a photo to create a resulting photo that represents a subsection of the full, original image. Unlike resizing a photo, which changes the number of pixels while keeping the original composition, cropping trims parts of a photo — typically unnecessary areas — and creates a new composition. This can be done to change the aspect ratio, better focus on a subject, and/or draw the viewers’ eyes to a particular portion of the frame.
Crop Factor. The ratio of a digital camera’s sensor size relative to the “full frame” size (36×24mm) popularized by 35mm film. For example, a smaller APS-C format image sensor typically has a crop factor of 1.5x or 1.6x. This is also known as the focal length multiplier since multiplying a lens’s focal length by a smaller sensor’s crop factor will result in a focal length with an equivalent field of view on a full-frame sensor. For example, a 50mm lens on a 1.6x crop sensor will have a field of view equivalent to an 80mm lens on full frame.
Crop Sensor. Any digital sensor that is smaller than 35mm full frame, which is considered to be the reference size when discussing image sensors. Crop sensors have a crop factor depending on the ratio between their size and full frame.
Crushed Shadows. When underexposure occurs in the darkest parts of a photo, causing details in those areas to be forever lost due to most or all the pixels rendering as pure black. This is also known as clipping.
