Digital Camera Terms
A brief explanation of some commonly used digital camera terminology.
Aperture
Camera lenses have an iris or diaphragm at their centre. The aperture is the hole formed by the blades of this iris or diaphragm. In some compact cameras the diaphragm is incorporated into the shutter, using two overlapping L-shaped shutter blades that open different amounts to create different apertures, but most cameras have a separate mechanism, often with 6 or 8 blades. Most camera lenses give optimum performance around 2-3 stops below their maximum aperture.AF
Automatic Focus. This feature automatically focuses the camera's lens. Also known as 'Auto Focus.'Auto Flash
A flash unit in a camera that uses a special light receptor to automatically calculate the required amount of flash light required, based on the distance from the subject.Aspherical Lens
Normally, a portion of the spherical front surface of a camera lens contains aberrations. Lens designers, in order to create a perfectly curved lens face, have ultimately created a non-spherical, or aspherical lens. The Lumix DMC FX8 combines three aspherical lenses to produce a 3x Optical Zoom lens in a compact unit.Backlight
This term is used to describe when light strikes the subject from the rear. Normally this causes the subject to become a silhouette, however, using a Cameras flash to light the subject from the front will prevent this effect.Bounce Flash
Instead of focusing a digital cameras flashlight directly on the subject, the cameras flash is bounced off a wall or ceiling.This is especially useful for portrait photography as it almost eliminates redeye. The Lumix DMC LC1 has a flash which is designed to enable bounce flash techniques.
Camera Angle
This term is used to describe the angle of the camera relative to the subject. If the camera is looking down on the subject, it is called a high-angle shot, etc.Digital Zoom
A feature found in many digital cameras that takes a portion of the image's data and displays it at full size, producing an enlargement of the original image, similar to the effect of using a telephoto lens. This process however degrades the image and the stronger the digital zoom used, the more the image will degrade. The digital zoom feature can be found across the Lumix camera range with even the cheap entry level DMC LS1 having a 4 × digital zoom.Effective Pixels
The number of pixels a digital camera uses is slightly less than the total number of pixels normally stated for the cameras image sensor CCD, CMOS, etc, therefore this term represents the actual number of pixels used to record an image. As a rule the cheaper the digital camera the less pixels you get.Focal length
The focal length of a simple camera lens is the distance from the centre of the lens to the sharp image of a distant subject. Together with the film format, it determines the angle of view of the lens. Generally, camera lenses with focal length similar to the film format are called standard lenses, and those with shorter focal lengths have a wider angle of view and are called wide-angle camera lenses.In order to get longer focal lengths from a camera lens without increasing the lenses length too much, lens designers use a magnifying lens element to create a telephoto design. Increasing the focal length results in greater subject magnification, but reduces depth of field. You also need to use faster shutter speeds because hand shake and subtle movements of the camera are also magnified although the Lumix cameras O.I.S system does reduce the negative effects of this problem somewhat.
Zoom lenses tend to give slightly less resolution and evenness of coverage, have less wide maximum aperture, and have more linear distortion than fixed Camera lenses of similar quality. They are also generally larger and heavier than a fixed focus lens, but as a rule for most purposes their flexibility and convenience outweigh these disadvantages.
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