Digital Camera Terms To Know

It helps when learning to use your new digital camera to also know what some of the more common terms mean. Below you will find many of these common terms defined..
Automatic Mode — A setting that sets the focus, exposure and white-balance automatically.
Burst Mode or Continuous Capture Mode — a series of pictures taken one after another at quickly timed intervals with one press of the shutter button.
Compression — The process of compacting digital data, images and text by deleting selected information.
Digital Zoom — Cropping and magnifying the center part of an image.
JPEG — The predominant format used for image compression in digital cameras
Lag Time — The pause between the time the shutter button is pressed and when the camera actually captures the image

LCD — (Liquid-Crystal Display) is a small screen on a digital camera for viewing images.

Lens — A circular and transparent glass or plastic piece that has the function of collecting light and focusing it on the sensor to capture the image.
Megabyte — (MB) Measures 1024 Kilobytes, and refers to the amount of information in a file, or how much information can
be contained on a Memory Card, Hard Drive or Disk.
Pixels — Tiny units of color that make up digital pictures. Pixels also measure digital resolution. One million pixels
adds up to one mega-pixel.
RGB — Refers to Red, Green, Blue colors used on computers to create all other colors.
Resolution — Camera resolution describes the number of pixels used to create the image, which determines the amount of
detail a camera can capture. The more pixels a camera has, the more detail it can register and the larger the picture can be
printed.
Storage Card — The removable storage device which holds images taken with the camera, comparable to film, but much smaller. Also called a digital camera memory card...
Viewfinder — The optical "window" to look through to compose the scene.
White Balance — White balancing adjusts the camera to compensate for the type of light (daylight, fluorescent, incandescent, etc.,) or lighting conditions in the scene so it will look normal to the human eye.

What Is the White Balance Setting on my Digital Camera?

Have you ever taken a picture of a beautiful winter scene and been disappointed to discover the crisp, white snow came out with a bluish tint? This is the kind of situation your digital camera’s white balance is meant to prevent.

The white balance is a sensor that analyzes the lighting conditions and colors of a scene and adjusts so the white in the picture appears white. This helps insure the other colors appear as natural as possible. This is one advantage digital photography has over tradition film. With film, you buy with a certain lighting condition in mind. If that changes, you need to either change your film or hope you can fix any errors in post-production.

Most digital cameras allow you to use either automatic white balance or choose between several preset conditions such as full sun, cloudy day and so forth. Automatic white balance will work in most conditions. There may be times, however when you want to “warm” up a picture to enhance the color, such as for portraits or sunsets. The best way to do this is set your camera’s white balance to “cloudy”. This will deepen the colors and add a glowing quality to portraits. It will take a beautiful sunset and enhance it to the point of incredible.

Practice taking the same photo with different white balance settings to get a feel for the changes each setting evokes. Keep notes until you have a good idea of what each setting does. In time, you will come to automatically sense which setting is best for your particular situation.

White balance is a small setting that can make big changes in your finished photos. Make it your friend and you will no longer have to worry about faded sunsets or blue snow.

Five Ways to Make Money Using Your Digital Camera

Have you ever wanted to find a way to bring extra money into your household--yet don’t have a lot of time to spend on a full-time endeavor? The solution is as close as the digital camera sitting there in a drawer. The following suggestions are only a few of the many ways you can make money in your spare time with your camera.

* Pet photos - Most owners won't struggle to take a photograph with their pet all by themselves. You can be the one who makes it easy on them. Not only can you charge for the service and your time, but you can offer the photograph in it's digital form or as a print that you can mail to them later - either created by your own photo printer or by a photo processing service.

*Graduations - preschool, high school, or college graduations offer dozens, if not hundreds of opportunities to capture a significant moment in someone's life. If the family members of the graduate aren't located in as good a location or don't have as good a camera as yourself - you'll have even greater opportunity at getting the shots they couldn't.

*Holiday Family Postcards - offer your services to families that want their picture taken and put on a postcard that they can send to their extended family and friends.

*Photo Novelty Items - take photographs of people that want the pictures of themselves of their loved ones imprinted on coffee mugs, mouse pads, key chains, tee-shirts, and other items.

*Newborn photo service - parents of newborns are some of the busiest people in the world. Advertise your services on an on-call basis so that you can take informal snapshots for the growing family either before they leave the hospital, or after they get home. This way both parents and the child can be in more of the pictures all together, and the parents have one less thing to try and figure out