The Wild Photographer

Photo Jargon: 10 Definitions to help you Talk the Talk

• Episode 16

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Gosh I wish this existed when I was learning photography!  Today I go over 10 different "photo jargon" terms that will help you understand photography better.  This isn't only designed to help you talk the talk, but also to help you better learn from tutorials, photo guides, and fellow photographers that might use these terms around you. 

This one is straight to the point--learning definitions can be fun, right?

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Dare I say this might be one of my most helpful episodes yet. I was planning this one and thinking, gosh, I wish I had something like this when I was just starting in photography a number of years ago. This is gonna be good, this is gonna be helpful. We're talking about photo jargon today. If you're gonna walk the walk, you've gotta talk the talk as well. Maybe you don't need to talk the talk, maybe you're not like me and you don't get super nerdy and passionate about the various nomenclatures and definitions within photography, but at very least it's gonna help you with understanding things like online tutorials. Uh, it's gonna get you to react quicker if you're on a photo trip or a photo workshop and the the guide shouts, oh, open up, open up your lens, stop it down, stop it down. We're gonna tell you what all that stuff means today. Ultimately, this is gonna be one more arrow in your quiver to help you get better at photography, and that's what it's all about, right? Well, let's dive into it. Today is talking the talk photo jargon podcast, episode four of the wild photographer. We're gonna be talking about 10 different photo jargon terms today. I chose them not because I was looking to get to number 10, but I wanted to cover a pretty wide variety of terms that often trip up photographers. They're a little bit specific, they don't necessarily mean what they sound like, and I think it's gonna really elevate your photography very quickly. Number one is probably one of the most helpful slash mysterious. Mysterious in the sense that it is not really a common word at all, and there's a few different pronunciations. We're talking about boka or bokeh. It's spelled B-O-K-E-H, and in researching this even more, I still have found no conclusive evidence on which pronunciation is the unequivocally right one. Uh about half the people I know say bokeh, kind of like a bokeh of flowers. About half the people I know say boka, kind of like a bokeh, you know, U-H. Um, nevertheless, I probably use bokeh a little bit more often than not, just because, you know, I like the way it sounds. But what does it mean? So bouquet, simply put, is referring to that beautiful background blur that you have in your photos. You often see it with things like bird photography, wildlife photography, portrait photography. It's the result of that shallow depth of field, result of that very shallow aperture number. But bouquet, when we're talking about, okay, you want this sort of lens or you want this sort of effect, you want to have a nice bokeh in the background or nice bokeh in the background. What that's saying, you want that nice, pleasing blur in the background, and that's suggesting to the photographer you might want to use a low aperture number or a big aperture value, meaning, you know, f2.8, f1.4, maybe even f4 if you have a telephoto zoom on. Bokeh, bokeh, it's that pleasing background blur. The next one is is actually two different terms. We're talking about noise and grain. They are essentially the same thing. Um, a lot of people know what it is. It's it's that sort of sandpaper look that you might get to your photos if you're photographing at really high ISO numbers. It's almost always the result of photographing at quote unquote too high of an ISO. Now, we can go into a lot of detail on what that really means, you know, what is too high of ISO, but we're really not getting into that here. We're talking about the the result of it, the unpleasing result. We don't really want noise in grain. Noise, basically the same thing as grain. Um, grain is that look, it's it's that noisy look in your photos. It's almost as if you put your photo on top of a very fine sandpaper and just rubbed a pencil over it. It's it's pixelated, it's got some texture to it. We see it most pronounced when we're photographing dark skies, and you have this uniform sort of gray or blue background, dark blue of the night sky, and it's not smooth. It's not as smooth as you'd think. And that is a noise, that's the grain from photographing it too high of an ISO. I know I'm gonna get questions. So, what is too high? Well, really, it's very subjective to the camera you're using, but we start to get into quote unquote high ISOs when we're at 1600, 3200, certainly 6400 and above. I'd say most modern cameras, when you're shooting at 32 or 6400, you're starting to get into high ISOs and you're starting to notice grain. Even if you have the fanciest camera out there and it's minimal grain, you're still gonna notice it. But when we talk about noise and grain, that's exactly what we're talking about. The result of too high of an ISO, how do you get rid of it? Shoot it a lower ISO. Maybe not as easy as it sounds, but nevertheless, that's noise and grain. Term number three is one of my favorite terms because it's one of my favorite lenses, the nifty 50. I don't know where this term came from originally, but I use it all the time. A nifty 50, simply put, is a 50 millimeter fast lens. Uh, we're gonna talk about what a fast lens is next in a little more detail, but basically Nifty 50, 50 millimeter fixed or prime lens. It's usually at about f1.4, f1.8, some are even f1.2. But it's a very interesting, very artistic lens. A lot of photography students will start out with this lens and shoot with nothing else because it gives you that incredibly shallow depth of field. Um, it gives you a great bokeh or bokeh. Uh, nifty 50 is something I personally think every photographer should have in their kit. There's something about that focal range that makes it feasible, makes it doable for high-end camera manufacturers to create this lens with great optical quality at relatively low price. So you might get a fantastic Nifty-50 for like one or two hundred dollars. Hence why it's such an icon of the industry, hence why it always stays in my camera bag. I love it. That's a nifty-50. So a nifty 50 is a fast lens, but it's not the only fast lens. All Nifty-50s are fast lenses, all fast lenses are not necessarily Nifty-50s. There's a lot of other lenses that are considered fast. So, cutting to the chase, a fast lens is one that is capable of a very wide or big maximum aperture, which is the same thing as saying very small minimum F number, the smallest number possible. Uh, that's a little confusing because that small number means a wide aperture opening to your lens, but it's the same thing. So, what we're talking about with fast lenses, we're talking about your f1.2s, 1.4, f2, even f2.8. Basically, anything that allows a lot of light in, which is, you know, basically f/2.8 and lower down to f1.4, etc., etc., that is a fast lens. Now, first things first, how it got the term fast lens, hard to say, but most likely it's because a fast lens that is capable of letting in a lot of light also allows you to shoot on very fast shutter speeds. Now, there's way more advantage than just fast shutter speeds, but I think that's where the terminology, that the etymology, so to speak, comes in is you have a fast lens that means it's capable of very shallow F numbers, very shallow depth of field, and it results in the ability to shoot at faster shutter speeds. Now, today in the world of digital cameras, there's a lot of things that you can get you to shoot at fast shutter speeds, uh, ISO being a really principled one. However, there are other benefits to having a fast lens, not just getting a fast shutter speed. Going back to turn number one, uh, a fast lens allows you to get that beautiful bokeh or bouquet. A fast lens allows you to get really, really great night photography shots, whether it's astro or building photography, street photography at night, or even Aurora Borealis. So a fast lens is a fantastic addition to the kit, hence why I pretty much always have my nifty-50, which is a fast lens, in my kit. However, it's important to note that the term fast lens is relatively subjective. What I mean by that is probably most exemplified by when we get into the telephoto range. So let's say you're out there, you're photographing grizzly bears in Alaska, uh, and you are shooting at uh a 300 millimeter range. An F4 at 300 millimeters would be a fast lens. Um, while a fast lens at the wide end of the spectrum really needs to be f2.8 and lower, when you get into telephoto abilities, you know, f4, sometimes even f5.6 can be considered fast if you're shooting at 600 millimeter, 800 millimeter, and so on and so on. So really fast might be a bit more of a relative term than you'd think. So say you're out there in your photo guide or your photo tutorial or you're watching an instructional video, it says, you know, I would go for the fastest lens you possibly can for this particular setup. That means try to find a lens in your kit or if you're purchasing or renting one that has a lower F number than what you might otherwise expect. So again, it's hard to say that an F5.6 would ever be considered fast, but yeah, at 800 millimeters, that's kind of fast. Really, what we're talking about in general, just to sum it all up, is usually F4 or lower, especially in the telephoto range, but really most often most pros will not consider a lens true, truly fast unless it's f2.8 and lower. That's a fast lens, folks. Okay, next thing, this is a little bit more of that vernacular, a little bit more of that terminology. Like if you are on a photo trip and and your photo instructor says, Okay, get your wide lens, get wide, get wide. Simply put, this is a really easy one. Get wide just means zoom out. You know, if you're not familiar with the whole wide angle versus telephoto angle terminology, getting wide that means zoom out, have a wider angle of view, get more in the scene, zoom out. Okay, next one is another one that you might hear from fellow photographers out in the field or seeing tutorials, or if you're with a photo guide, he or she may say, open up. Open up your aperture. That basically means open your open your aperture, open that width, that diameter of your aperture, which essentially means get that F number lower. So let's say you're out there photographing at F11 because you want everything in focus, and you say to your photo guide, you know, gosh, I'm just getting everything's blurry, you know, or I'm just not getting what I want out of the shot. I'm not getting that nice bokeh or bokeh. Um, what do I do? Well, he or she says, open up. Open up your aperture. That simply means dial that aperture to a lowered number. Take it from f5.6 to f4, take it from f8 to f5.6, f4 to 2.8. Get it lower, smaller number, that's opening up. Another terminology you might hear is expose for, just the two words expose for. So oftentimes when we say when we're out in the field and we're photographing nature, wildlife, you know, whatever we're photographing, and we say, oh, okay, this is a very challenging scene. There's a lot of contrast, there's a lot of trees, there's a lot of light and dark. Expose for that meadow over there, or expose for that mountaintop, expose for that animal, and let everything else just do its thing. When we're talking about expose for, what we kind of need to go a little bit more depth here. When your camera is on anything but full manual, it is making some decisions for you for what to expose for. And I'll be honest, I I use uh a non-full manual most of the time because I think the cameras are getting very good, it saves me a step. I can always correct it with adjusting exposure compensation afterwards. But what that means is that your camera is exposing for something in the scene more or less perfectly, what the camera thinks is perfectly. When the camera exposes for something on pure even or dead zero in that exposure meter from like negative two to positive two, it's actually adjusting and exposing for an average of 18% gray in whatever you're photographing. So that you know, it could be a pinpointed animal or a place on the animal, it could be a tree or a flower. Your camera, when it's exposing for something, is actually aiming for an average of 18% gray across the pixels. Now, this is very good, it's very accurate. The camera's a digital instrument, it has to be scientific about it, and more often than not, 18% gray is what our eyes want. That's what a proper exposure looks like is 18% gray. However, when you have a lot of different light and dark in a seam, this is very classic for landscape photography or rainforest and jungle photography, is you do want to figure out what the camera should be exposing for. Now, I'm not gonna get into detail on all the different exposure and metering settings, but as you go from a what we call an evaluative or a matrix metering all the way down to a center-pointed metering, essentially you're going from the entire scene being evaluated by your camera to a very pinpointed spot on your camera's sensor. What you can do is use this concept of exposing for a very specific shot if you get down into that center or even spot metering mode. So you gotta choose something. If you hear from your guide or fellow photographer or you're watching a tutorial online or listening to a podcast, and you hear expose for, that means don't worry about all the rest of the modeled lighting, the lights and the darks and the shadows, expose for that one thing perfectly, and the rest will fall into place. So it's usually a tool to say, you know, that area that I'm telling you to expose for is a nice mid-tone. It's not too bright, it's not too dark. If you expose for that, the rest of the scene will be well lit, uh, as close to as perfectly lit as possible. Expose for, that's what it means. The next one we're getting into is uh actually in the world of filters. I don't use a lot of filters, there's really only a few filters that are commonplace these days, but one that is exceedingly commonplace and you you really need to have in your kit if you're a real deal landscape photographer, is what's known as an ND and sometimes even an ND grad. You might see this in the literature, you might see this on a tutorial or hear it from your fellow travelers if you're out in the field. ND simply stands for neutral density. ND grad stands for graduated neutral density. What that all means, basically, an ND filter is a sunglass tint for your lens. It is used most commonly when you're trying to get long exposure photography in bright daylight conditions. The issue, if you go back and listen to my podcast on the balance between aperture and shutter speed, the issue is that if you're trying to get a long exposure in the bright midday, your camera cannot compensate with a pinpointed enough aperture. It can't close that aperture enough to limit light. And you're you'll go ahead and try this in the field. Have like a one or two second exposure in a bright sunlit day. It doesn't have to be into the sun, just you can photograph grass in your backyard or a meadow or a mountain, wherever you might live, and you'll notice that your shutter speed is all the way uh, you know, at one second, your aperture is all the way at F22 or F35, whatever that biggest F number can be, and it's still blown out and bright. It might be a completely white scene or it might just have very, very little texture and it's completely white. What that is, is because your camera cannot compensate by that excessive excessive amount of light that you're putting in your shot with that one or two second exposure. Now, normally we don't really want a one or two second exposure, but there are a few applications. One of my favorite is silky waterfall effects. And there are places in the world where you you can't get that waterfall in the shadows, you can't photograph at night. A place that comes to mind is Brooks Falls in Alaska. You can't be out of the platforms photographing bears in the middle of the dark. It's not possible, not allowed. Uh, and that waterfall is in the dead middle of the sun most often. It's you know, bright sunny day. So, what you have to do is you have to forcibly put some sort of tint on your lens, and that's what basically a neutral density filter is. It's a sunglass for your lens to allow you to shoot long exposure photography in daylight conditions. Super helpful. So, what's the graduated part of this? Well, a graduated ND, or really it's it's a graduated neutral density filter, but an ND grad by its terminology, is um it's graduated, it's varied. So, what you'll see in that filter is part of it's clear and part of it's tinted, and it has this nice little fade in the middle. If you have a circular one, it's usually gonna be bisected right in the middle. They have some great ones that are rectangular that you can actually put on a bracket on the tip of your lens and move it up and down. It's mostly when you're photographing sunsets and sunrises, or more importantly, more all-encompassing horizons. If you have a horizon shot and the sky is brighter than the foreground, you can actually use an ND grad filter to artificially tint that bright sky to make the exposure more even between that foreground and that sky. Like I said, it's great for sunrises, great for sunsets, especially when you have some texture in the foreground. I'm thinking about this great shot that I have of Bryce Canyon National Park at sunrise, and the foreground is it kind of in the shadows, but the sunrise is just so spectacular. What I want to do is have it more evenly exposed such that the sunrise isn't the only thing that comes that comes to light, the only thing that's actually bright enough to see. I want the hoodoos, I want the amphitheater of Bryce National Park to actually have some light, have some color. So I slap on the graduated neutral density filter, I tint the sunrise, and the amphitheater, the hoodoos themselves, the rock formations, get that part of the filter that is not tinted, and that gives me a beautiful shot, simply put. Okay, we are down to our penultimate term here. Um a stop. That's it. A stop. What does a stop mean? Whew. This could be this might turn into its own episode at some point. A stop is basically a unit, believe it or not, a unit of light. Um, not quite that straightforward. I'm sure you're gonna get a bunch of bunch of different definitions from various photographers, but most commonly when we look at what a quote unquote stop is, it usually has to do with aperture. So the best thing to do is Google an aperture chart, and you'll notice that apertures are broken down into concrete stops. And I can actually just list this off because I I have chosen to memorize this over the years. I think if you want to be an aspiring photographer, you should do so too. It goes like this and it starts at f1.4. Every full stop you go beyond that lets in half as much light because that aperture is getting closed down to a more narrow and narrow opening. It lets in exactly half as much light. That's the essence of what a full stop is. So here's the list. It goes f/1.4, one full stop is f2. That's half as much light as f1.4, another full stop is 2.8, another is f4, another is f5.6, another is f8, another is f11, another is f16, and the final, usually the final is f22. So you'll notice that that scale is a little confusing because it's not totally linear with the numbers. You know, you're not for every one unit, you're not going half as much or twice as much light. You're not, it's not really discernible. You have these very concrete stops at f1.4, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22. So it's best to memorize that. It gives you more than anything, it gives you a really good appreciation for why it's so powerful and useful to have an f2.8 lens because that lets in like multiple times more light than f8 or f11 or f16. And f1.4 lets in four times as much light as f2.8. So even though 1.4 and 2.8 seem like they're close on the scale, uh, they're not. So anyway, it's worth memorizing that one stop means some sort of unit of light, and as you go from left to right on that aperture scale, you're letting in half as much light per stop. Now, even though this term stop is most commonly associated with aperture or an aperture priority mode in your camera, you can add a full stop or take away a full stop by messing with your shutter speed too. And it's the same principle. If you double or have your shutter speed, you are going up or down a full stop. Same thing goes with ISO. If you double or have your ISO, fortunately it's much more linear than the app aperture. You know, you can you can actually do the quick calculation of, oh yeah, 400 is twice 200. That is that is a full stop. Going from one hundredth of a second to one fiftyth of a second lets in twice as much light. Going from F2.8 to F2 lets in twice as much light. Those are all stops. One additional part of this stop jargon is a partial stop. Uh most cameras actually break their stops into thirds. So you'll notice on your camera, you can't just with one click go from f5.6 to f8, or from f8 to f11, or either way. Usually they're broken into thirds. So from f5.6, you see it's the next little click is 6.3, the next click is 7.1, and then it's f8. So stops are actually usually within camera systems, camera menus, broken down by thirds of a stop. Really, more than anything, just this just allows a little bit more flexibility in how perfect and how accurate we are in negotiating the amount of light we have in our scene. But you'll often hear when photographers and photo guides are out there in the field, they'll say, you know, I would stop this down one third of a stop. I would go one third of a stop, negative or positive. We're usually not operating in full stops because that that is a pretty big change of light. So third stops are a little bit more practical, but nevertheless, they all have to do with that doubling or having the amount of light. Now, the final term you heard me mention it briefly there, a little bit of segue, is stopping it down. This is a very, very common term. You might hear a photo guide or a photo tutorial say, ooh, definitely stop down this shot to get as much depth of field as possible. Stop it down, stop it down. What that means is go in the direction, usually of your aperture to increase that F number. So remember, stops kind of have most to do with light, but they're usually anchored in changing your aperture. Stopping it down has everything to do with aperture. You want to stop down this shot usually because you want to get a bigger, wider depth of field. This is very common in landscape photography. You might be in front of this beautiful mountain meadow and your photo guide says, oh, stop this down a little bit. Like if you're shooting uh at f4, stop it down to f5.6, or stop it down, you know, at least one stop or two stops. That could mean if you're shooting at f5.6, one stop would be f8, two stops would be f11, etc., etc. So stopping it down, simply put, means increase that f number to get that wider depth of field. Alright, that was a whirlwind of 10 terms, 10 pieces of photo jargon to get you to talk the talk and really help you walk the walk. At the end of the day, this is all about getting you to become a better photographer. I have no doubt if you are able to harness these terms in your photography, understand them if they're told to. You in a tutorial or buy a photo guide, you're gonna get better shots in the end. So, with that, that concludes photo jargon podcast, episode number four, season two, etc. etc. Hey, let us know. Join us on Instagram if you are on the old IG. Let us know what episodes you'd like to see or hear next. It's the.wild.photographer on Instagram. So it's the at symbol, the dot wild.photographer. Join us, send me a message, let us know what you'd like to hear more about, and that concludes photo jargon. Cheers, folks, enjoy it. Happy shooting.

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Court Whelan

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