The camera glossary.
Plain-English definitions of the camera and filmmaking terms that actually matter — aperture, shutter speed, ISO, depth of field, frame rate, log footage, and more.
Exposure
Aperture
Aperture is the adjustable opening inside a lens that controls how much light reaches the sensor and how much of the scene stays in focus.
Dynamic range
Dynamic range is the span between the darkest shadow and the brightest highlight a sensor can record in a single frame without losing detail.
Exposure triangle
The exposure triangle describes how aperture, shutter speed, and ISO interact — change one and you must change another to keep the same brightness.
F-stop
An f-stop is the ratio of focal length to aperture diameter, the standard scale for describing how much light a lens lets through.
Histogram
A histogram is a graph of tonal distribution in an image, showing how many pixels fall at each brightness level from black to white.
ISO
ISO measures how strongly a camera amplifies the signal from its sensor, letting you shoot in low light at the cost of visible noise.
Neutral density filter
A neutral density filter is darkened glass that cuts light entering the lens without shifting color, enabling wide apertures or slow shutters in bright conditions.
Shutter speed
Shutter speed is how long a camera's sensor is exposed to light, controlling both image brightness and how motion is frozen or blurred.
Lenses & optics
Bokeh
Bokeh is the aesthetic character of the out-of-focus areas in an image — not how much blur there is, but how that blur looks.
Chromatic aberration
Chromatic aberration is the color fringing that appears when a lens fails to focus all wavelengths of light at exactly the same point.
Depth of field
Depth of field is the range of distance in a scene that appears acceptably sharp, from a paper-thin sliver to nearly everything at once.
Focal length
Focal length, measured in millimetres, determines how wide a view a lens captures and how strongly it compresses distance between objects.
Polarizing filter
A polarizing filter blocks light waves oscillating in particular orientations, cutting reflections and glare and deepening skies.
Prime lens
A prime lens has a single fixed focal length, trading zoom convenience for wider apertures, better optics, and smaller size.
Vignetting
Vignetting is the darkening of an image toward its corners, occurring as an optical flaw and applied deliberately as a stylistic device.
Zoom lens
A zoom lens covers a range of focal lengths in one body, trading some optical quality and maximum aperture for reach and flexibility.
Composition & light
Aspect ratio
Aspect ratio is the proportional relationship between a frame's width and height, from boxy 4:3 to ultra-wide 2.39:1 cinemascope.
Blue hour
Blue hour is the twilight window before sunrise and after sunset when the sun is below the horizon and remaining light turns deep blue.
Dutch angle
A dutch angle tilts the camera so the horizon runs diagonally, producing a deliberate sense of unease, disorientation, or instability.
Golden hour
Golden hour is the period shortly after sunrise and before sunset when low-angle sunlight turns warm, soft, and directional.
Leading lines
Leading lines are real or implied lines within a scene that guide the viewer's eye toward the subject or through the frame.
Rule of thirds
The rule of thirds divides the frame into a three-by-three grid and suggests placing key elements along those lines or at their intersections.
Motion & video
B-roll
B-roll is supplemental footage cut alongside the main subject or interview, providing visual context and giving the edit room to breathe.
Frame rate
Frame rate is how many individual images a camera records per second, which sets both the perceived look of motion and the potential for slow motion.
Global shutter
A global shutter exposes and reads every pixel on the sensor at the same instant, eliminating the skew and wobble of rolling shutter.
Hyperlapse
A hyperlapse is a time-lapse in which the camera moves substantial distance between frames, producing accelerated motion through space as well as time.
Jump cut
A jump cut is an edit between two similar shots of the same subject, creating a deliberate and visible discontinuity in time.
Match cut
A match cut joins two shots that share a similar shape, motion, or composition, using the visual rhyme to carry the viewer across a transition.
Rolling shutter
Rolling shutter is the skew and wobble that appears when a CMOS sensor reads its rows sequentially rather than capturing the whole frame at once.
Shutter angle
Shutter angle is the cinema convention for expressing exposure time relative to frame rate, with 180 degrees producing natural-looking motion blur.
Stop motion
Stop motion animates physical objects by photographing them one frame at a time, moving them slightly between each exposure.
Time-lapse
A time-lapse captures frames at long intervals and plays them back at normal speed, compressing hours or days into seconds.
Color & post
Color grading
Color grading is the post-production craft of shaping an image's color and contrast to establish mood, period, and visual consistency.
Log footage
Log footage uses a logarithmic curve to record a wide dynamic range into a flat, low-contrast file that retains detail for grading.
LUT
A LUT, or look-up table, is a file that maps input color values to output values, applying a consistent color transform in one step.
RAW vs JPEG
RAW files preserve the sensor's unprocessed data for maximum editing latitude, while JPEGs are processed, compressed, and ready to share immediately.
White balance
White balance corrects for the color of the light source so that objects which are white in reality look white in the photograph.
Cameras & sensors
Crop factor
Crop factor is the multiplier that converts a lens's focal length to its full-frame equivalent field of view on a smaller sensor.
Point-and-shoot camera
A point-and-shoot is a compact camera with a fixed lens and automatic exposure, designed to be carried everywhere and used without configuration.
Sensor size
Sensor size is the physical dimensions of a camera's imaging chip, influencing light gathering, depth of field, noise, and lens field of view.