Photographic Abbreviations and Glossary

OK, here is a list I nicked off another forum ... it's ok, they nicked it off the web ;) I'm sure there are many more, have a look through and add if you feel the urge :)

The List...

A

A-DEP - Automatic Depth of Field

AE - Automatic Exposure

AEB - Auto-Exposure Bracketing

AF - Auto Focus.

AF-S or AFS - Nikon term for lenses that have inbuilt auto focus motors

A (Nikon) -Aperture Priority
AV (Canon) - Aperture Priority

AS - Antishake. (Also known as VR {Nikon}, IS {Canon}, VC {Tamron}, OS {Sigma})

B

Bokeh - how the lens renders the out of focus parts of the image.

BMP - Windows bitmap

BTL - Behind the Lens

B&W - Black and White

C

CCD - Charged Coupled Device an older sensor technology

CHDK - Canon Hackers Development Kit. Click here for a detailed explanation.

Colour Depth - The range or amounts of colour that can be or is recorded

CMOS - Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor a newer sensor technology

CMS - Colour Management System

CMYK - Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black

CWB - Custom White Balance.

D

DI - Digital Imaging

DOF - Depth of Field.

DP - Digital Photography or in filmmaking Director of Photography

DPI - Dots per Inch.

DPOF - Digital Print Order Format

DR or Dynamic Range - The number of EV stops between the brightest and darkest part of a scene or image

D-SLR or DSLR - Digital Single Lens Reflex

DZ - Digital Zoom.

E

EC - Exposure Compensation

ETTR - expose to the right

E-TTL -Evaluative Through The Lens

EV - Exposure Value

EVF - Electronic Viewfinder

EXIF - Exchangeable Image File Format.

F

FEB - Flash Exposure Bracketing

FEC - Flash Exposure Compensation

FEL - Flash Exposure Lock

FF - Full Frame

FFS - When things go wrong

FOV - Field Of View

FPS - Frames per Second

FX - Nikons term for full frame

G

GB - Gigabyte

GIF - Graphics Interchange Format.

H

HDR - High Dynamic Range

HSS - High Speed Sync

I

IBIS - In body image stabalization

IF - Internal Focusing

IR - Infrared

IS - Image Stabilization (Canon specific technology when used in describing a lens)

ISO - International Standards Organization.

IQ - Image Quality

J

JPEG or JPG - Joint Photographic Experts Group.

K

KB - Kilobyte - 1024 of these go into 1mb

L

LCD - Liquid Crystal Display

LED - Light Emitting Diode

LTE - Long Time Exposure

M

M - Manual

MB - Megabyte

MF - Manual Focus

MLU - Mirror Lock-up

MMC - MultiMedia Card.

MP - Megapixels.

MS - Memory Stick (aka a USB key)

N

ND Filters - Neutral Density Filters (see also Graduated ND Filters)

NR - Noise Reduction

NS@W - Not Safe @ Work (Also NSFW = Not Safe For Work)

O

OCF - Off Camera Flash

OCR - Optical Character Recognition.

OEM - Original Equipment Manufacturer

OOC - Out of Camera (sometimes referred to as SOOC, i.e. straight out of camera)

OOF - Out of Focus

OTF - Off the Film

OVF - Optical Viewfinder

OZ - Optical Zoom.

P

P - Programmed auto-exposure (NOT Professional mode as some seem to think ;))

PIC - Picture

PICS - Pictures

PIXEL(S) - Picture Element - i.e the smallest addressable element of an image

PJ - Photojournalism or Photojournalist

PNG - Portable Network Graphics. Click here to learn more about this image file format.

PP - Post Processing

PPA - Professional Photographers of America

PPI - Pixels per Inch. Click here to learn more.

PQ - Picture Quality

PS - (Adobe) Photoshop

PSE - Photoshop Elements

PSP - Paintshop Pro.

Q

R

S

SD - Secure Digital: a memory card format for your digital camera.

SDHC- Secure Digital High Capacity. A high capacity form of SD

SLR - Single Lens Reflex: the same thing as a D-SLR, only referring to film cameras.

SOOC - Straight Out of Camera (also see OOC).

SP - Shutter Priority. (Just S in Nikon speak and referred to as TV in Canon speak)

SS - Shutter Speed.

Strobe - a studio type flash

'SWMBO' - She Who Must Be Obeyed, i.e the boss ;)

T

Tb - Terabyte - 1024 gb

TFP - Time For Prints, often a trade for the time of a model who get prints in return

TFCD - Time For CD, as above but instead of prints the images are burned to CD

TIFF or TIF - Tagged Image File Format.

TTL - Through-the-lens

TV - Time Value (Canon speak for shutter priority)

U

USB - Universal Serial Bus

USM - Unsharp Mask, also means Ultrasonic Motor

UWA - Ultra Wide Angle

V

VR - Vibration Reduction. Nikon specific vibration control

W

WA - Wide Angle

WB - White Balance.

WS - Watt-Second, a way of describing flash or strobe power

WYSIWYG - What you see is what you get
X

Y

Z