Photography Slang

Question 1

Tog / Photog

Answer 1

Shortened terms for photographer.

Question 2

Glass

Answer 2

Lenses. As in “Ooh, that’s some fancy new glass you got there!”, referring to a lens.

Question 3

Fast / Slow

Answer 3

Used to describe the maximum aperture of a lens. Often combined with “glass”, e.g. “I need to get some fast glass!”

Question 4

Chimping

Answer 4

Looking at the LCD after taking a photo. The term comes from the suggestion that photographers make chimp-like noises (“Ooh ooh ooh!”) when admiring the great shot they just took.

Question 5

Pixel Peeper / Peeping

Answer 5

Checking out the image quality of a camera or lens by opening up an image file on the computer, zooming waaaay in, and scrutinizing the quality down to the pixel. Often considered a derogatory term, and suggests that these photographers are not taking real world standards into account.

Question 6

Magic / Golden Hour

Answer 6

The hour or so before sunset, and after sunrise, when the angle of the sun produces magical, golden light. A fantastic time to take photos outdoors.

Question 7

Spray and Pray

Answer 7

Shooting a large amount of images without much care, and hoping that one will turn out.

Question 8

Uncle Bob

Answer 8

A term used by wedding photographers to describe a relative with a camera who tends to get in the way of the hired photographer.

Question 9

Bokeh

Answer 9

A Japanese term used to describe the quality of the out-of-focus areas in an image. If it’s particularly pleasing, you’ll hear “Sweet bokeh!” Pronunciation varies, usually either “boh-kay” or “boh-ke”.

Question 10

Prime

Answer 10

A fixed focal length lens. The other option is a zoom lens, which can move between a range a focal lengths.

Question 11

Nifty 50

Answer 11

A 50mm fixed focal length lens. Considered a fantastically useful focal length.

Question 12

Normal Lens

Answer 12

A normal lens is one who’s focal-length is equal to the diagonal of the sensor or film. This is said to give a natural perspective similar to that of a single human eye.

Question 13

Blown Out

Answer 13

When bright areas in an image are so overexposed that they lose all detail, and become pure white.

Question 14

Grip and Grin

Answer 14

A snapshot-type photo, where the subjects grip on to each other, look at the camera, and grin.

Question 15

Selfie

Answer 15

A self-portrait.

Question 16

Sharp

Answer 16

Can describe a lens or an image. A lens can be considered sharp if it provides clear, crisp images.

Question 17

Soft

Answer 17

The opposite of sharp. A lens can be considered soft when it doesn’t provide sharp images. A photo could be soft if it was slightly out-of-focus.

Question 18

Tack

Answer 18

A photo can be sharp if it is perfectly in focus, and has clear detail.

Question 19

Noisy

Answer 19

Describes the quality of an image in regards to the amount of digital noise—grainy artifacts in the photo. It might also be used to describe a camera, for instance “It’s really noisy at 3200 ISO”.

Question 20

Frame

Answer 20

You may hear “fill the frame”, or “I took ten frames to get a good one”, or “In this frame the cat is sleeping”. This term is used pretty frequently! Filling the frame, or looking for distractions in the frame, refers to the image that you are taking.

Question 21

Flare

Answer 21

Also known as lens flare, this refers to the effect achieved when light is internally reflected in a lens. It results in colourful streaks, circles, and rays.

Question 22

Pano

Answer 22

Panorama - An image with a wide (or sometimes tall) aspect ratio, usually created by stitching multiple images together using Photoshop or a program dedicated to that purpose. “At Least 3x a wide as it is Tall”