Lesson: Photo Lingo

I know photography "slang" can be very confusing..and honestly, a lot of the time the words are just redundant, and mean nothing more than changing the shutter speed or exposure.
Working in your presets help you avoid running into these words, but lets face it..you will never be able to take full advantage of your cameras (and your own) abilities until you figure this stuff out. So Im going to try to make it a little easier on you.

Here is a quick explanation of some confusing terms you might run into:
ISO speed - This one might not be as confusing, I did touch on this a little here, but basically, what that does, it controls how sensitive your cameras sensor is to the light that reaches it. If your ISO is too high your image will be too light, too low and your image will be too dark. Adjusting this is one of the main things that will affect the exposure of your image.

ex. here is the same image, at the same settings, just changing the ISO speed.

click to enlarge image

 from left to right: iso 100, iso 200, iso 400, iso 800, iso 1600, iso 3200

Exposure Compensation - This goes hand in hand with what I talked about here, when you adjust your aperture/shutter speed, sometimes its still to dark or bright, so you can adjust this to compensate for that. On your camera it will look like the image below (the highlighted area) It will show -2..1..0..1..+2 (or something similar) Adjusting to the + side will brighten your image, adjusting to the - side, will darken your image.

Auto Exposure Bracketing - (AEB) This is something that can be very useful in certain situations. When you dont have time to be messing with your settings in between every shot and want to take an image at different exposures. How this works..you will see your exposure compensation meter again, but this time when you change it you will see two lines which move opposite of each other, so when you turn it once, they will be at the same spots, one on the left side of 0, one on the right. You will then take three shots of the same image, and your camera will adjust the exposure for you. Taking one at 0, then one darkening and one lightening to where you have it set. (having it on continuous shooting makes this easier) Every camera is different for setting this, so check your manuel if you arent sure how.

ex. heres some shots I took using AEB.

click to enlarge image

from left to right: exposure -2, exposure 0, exposure +2

Bulb Exposure - This is a shutter speed setting. When set at bulb, or just b on some cameras, you basically hold in the shutter release button as long as you want the shutter to be open. This is good for when you want to test different shutter speeds without having to manually change it every time. Using a timer remote is helpful when shooting in bulb, because it reduces possible shake from your hand on the camera.
TTL metering - This stands for "Through The Lens" Metering. And all that does is measures the light reflected back through the camera lens from the scene in front of it.
Center Weighted Metering - Using the cameras exposure meter to concentrate on the central 60-80% of the image.
Flash Ratio - The balance of natural and artificial light when using more than one light source.
Hyperfocal Distance - The distance into your picture at where the selected aperture will be most effective.

Depth of Field - the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image.

Hopefully that helps clear up some confusion. As you can see most of these terms have to do with shutter speed and aperture, or exposure of your image. 

Remember: Don't be afraid to play with your settings, sometimes just reading about it isn't enough. Get hands on..practice different set ups until you figure it out. This can be a very confusing topic that can take some time to understand. Don't let the technical words scare you away, once you get the hang of it you'll completely impress yourself. 

Keep on shooting. :)

Disclaimer: All photos are mine, unless otherwise stated. All opinions are my own. No monetary exchange occurred in exchange for this post.