Does anyone know what these digital camera terms mean?
EV is exposure value. In digital camera terms this means the amount you can brighten or darken an image if you don’t like the way the auto exposure handled it. +1 EV gives twice the exposure, -1 EV gives half. Focus – getting the image of your subject sharp. The automatic focus system of a digicam will have several points that it tries to get in focus. Metering mode. This is the way that the camera works out how much exposure to give. Exposure is controlled by a combination of shutter speed and aperture. The auto modes of a camera will decide how to set these. The metering mode allows you to choose how the camera assess the scene. Evaluative is the most usual, where the camera tries to assess the exposure assuming a typical scene. Spot metering is another option which some cameras offer. ISO – this is the sensitivity of the sensor to light. The sensitivity values have been based on the same scale (ISO/ASA) that was used for film. A setting of ISO 100 will mean the exposure will the the
EV is exposure value. Meters take a reading and then set the shutter/aperture so the average of the reading is 50% grey. If there is a lot of white in the picture such as in a snow shot, the metering will underexpose and render the snow as a shade of grey. EV lets you counteract this and move the exposure settings. Metering Mode is the way the camera meters the scene. Usually there are three types. Centre weighted average which reads the whole scene and gives a preference to the centre of the image (most compacts use this mode, its often the only type of metering available). Spot Metering which gives a reading for a tiny part of the scene and ignores the rest of the image, this can be useful for making sure the face and eyes of a portrait or any other detail(s) are accurately metered, let the rest of the picture look after itself. Finally there is zones (called different thing by different manufacturers) which takes a separate average from ‘zones’ all over the picture and then averages
EV: Exposure value. This is a function that can be used to make the camera over expose or under expose each shot. Sometimes you need to over/under expose to get say snow to be white or to increase the intensity of colors. Focus: Is having the image clear. The lens on your camera has to focus on something to get a clear shot. ISO: Is a measurement of the sensitivity to light of the film or sensor. The higher the number the more sensitive to light it is. Higher ISO settings let you use a faster shutter speed in lower light situations. The trade off is that higher ISO’s have more noise. REC mode: This is how the camera records each picture. You will usually see settings like Jpeg fine, medium, small, RAW etc.
