vocab 3

MAIN LIGHT

The primary or dominant light source. It influences texture, volume, and shadows

MANUAL EXPOSURE

A camera operating mode that requires the user to determine and set both the aperture and shutter speed. This is the opposite of automatic exposure.

MEGABYTE

Just over one million bytes

MEGAPIXEL

A million pixels

MEMORY

The storage capacity of a hard drive or other recording media

MEMORY CARD

Typical recording medium of digital cameras. Memory cards can be used to store still images, moving images, or sound as well as related file data. Individual card capacity as well as by the size of the recorded data, such as image resolution.

MENU

An on-screen listing of user options

MID-TONE

The tone that appears as medium brightness, or medium gray tone, in a photographic print

MODE

Specified operating conditions of the camera or software program

NOISE

The digital equivalent of grain. It is often caused by a number of different factors such as a high ISO setting, heat, sensor design, etc. Though usually undesirable, it may be added for creative effect using an image-processing program.

OVEREXPOSED

When too much light is recorded with the image, causing the photo to be too light in tone.

PAN

Moving the camera to follow a moving subject. When a slower shutter speed is used, this creates an image which the subject appears sharp and the background is blurred.

PERSPECTIVE

The effect of the distance between the camera and image elements upon the perceived size of objects in an image. It is also an expression of this three-dimensional relationship in two dimensions.

PIXEL

Derived from picture element. A pixel is the base component of a digital image. Every individual pixel can have distinct color and tone

POLARIZATION

An effect achieved by using a polarizing filter. It minimizes reflections from nonmetallic surfaces like water and glass and saturates colors by removing glare. Polarization often makes skies appear bluer at 90 degrees to the sun. The term also applies to the above effects stimulated by a polarizing software filter.  

RAW

An image file format that has little or no internal processing applied by the camera. It contains 12-bit color information, a wider range of data than 8-bit formats such as JPEG

RESOLUTION

The amount of data available for an image as applied to image size. It is expressed in pixels or megapixels, or sometimes as lines per inch on a monitor or dots per inch on a printed image.