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Digital Camera Buzzwords You've just bought your first digital camera, but how often do you read the instruction manuals that come with new items? It's a well-known fact that most people leave the manual in the box and continue with an "it can't be that hard to work out" attitude. If you are just one person who leaves the manual in the box, after you've taken your new camera out, then the following terms will be of beneficial use to you. AUTOMATIC MODE This sets the focus, exposure and white balance automatically, so that you don't have to worry about light settings, manual focus and so on. BURST OR CONTINUOUS CAPTURE MODE Very useful for taking a quick succession of photos one after the other, without the need to stop and reset your camera between each take. On this setting, you just need to press the shutter button once. DIGITAL ZOOM Using a computer photo editing programme, this is the act of magnification by cropping the most important section of the image. JPEG Also shown as jpg, this format is the most predominant for image compression in digital photography. LAG TIME This is the difference in time between the shutter button being pressed and the camera actually capturing an image. LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) The small screen on the back of a digital camera for previewing captured images. LENS The circular and transparent glass or plastic part of the camera that emits light and provides the focusing function when capturing images. MEGABYTE Equivalent to 1024 Kilobytes. This states how much storage room is on a computer's hard drive, a CD/DVD or a memory card. PIXELS Tiny squares of colour that form a digital picture, either in digital photos, digital TVs or computer monitors. One million pixels are known as a mega-pixel. RGB Represents the three colours (red, green and blue) used bycomputers to create all other colours. RESOLUTION This describes the number of pixels used to create an image. It also determines the amount of detail a camera can capture. In short, the higher the resolution, the more detail the camera can capture and the larger the resulting photo can be printed without losing its sharpness. STORAGE CARD This is a removable device which stores images taken by a digital camera. Also called a memory card. VIEWFINDER The tiny peep-hole you can look through near the top of a camera to help compose your photos. |