Stupid Photography Terms That Don't Make Sense Part 3

This is the last episode in my series of stupid photography terms that don’t make sense. In this episode, I give you my take on these terms.

1. Crop factor
2. Speedlite/ flashgun
3. Camera shake
4. Stop
5. F-stop
6. Fast lens
7. JPEG
8. RAW

And why I think that they are stupid. Most of them. I also tell you

• What if I use a phone to take photos and not a camera?
• What if I use a film camera?
• And finally, what I do.

All explained in plain English, without the irrelevant detail, in less than 27 (ish) minutes!

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Transcript

Here is the answery bit

Stupid photography terms. Terms that don’t make sense. Terms that confuse. Terms that conflict. These are terms that have no place in photography in 2023.

Here are those last nine stupid terms.

And again, I will come up with a more sensible alternative for some of these.

1. Crop factor
2. Speedlite/ flashgun
3. Camera shake
4. Stop
5. F-stop
6. Fast lens
7. JPEG
8. RAW

I know - that is eight. I will explain later.

Crop factor

That takes me nicely, or not so nicely, onto crop factor.

The crop factor is applied when you are using a sensor other than a full-frame sensor. A full-frame sensor is the benchmark here; I covered this in another episode. A full-frame digital camera has a full-frame sensor. And that sensor is 24mm x 36mm. Which is the same size as a 35mm film negative. I won’t go over this again. Check out episode 168 for more on this.

But there are digital cameras with smaller camera sensors. For us consumers, that will be either a cropped sensor camera or a micro four thirds camera. The term suggests that these sensors have been cropped, which I guess they have, as they are smaller. OK, they were made smaller. So they haven't been cropped.

The crop factor number is related to the relative size of the digital sensor. Cropped sensor cameras have a crop factor of 1.5. And Canon has not helped by having a crop factor of 1.6.

And micro four-thirds cameras have a 2x crop factor. How these numbers are calculated I have no idea.

Oh, it all gets so complicated.

So, with a cropped sensor camera, 50mm is still 50mm, but you get the same field of view as with 75-80mm on a full-frame camera, and 100mm on a micro four thirds camera. Simple eh? This is the problem with the term focal length. It makes my head hurt. And I understand it!

Just remember that the crop factor does not change the focal length. Nor does it change the aperture. These are fixed things within the lens.

But 50mm on a cropped sensor camera is not the same as 50mm on a full-frame camera. Technically, it is, but ordinary people don’t care about the technical bit – all ordinary people care about is what they are looking at through their viewfinder. Which is not the same.

No, crop factor as a standalone term does not make sense; there should be a better way of describing what is happening.

Speedlite/ flashgun

Speedlite. That is s p e e d l i t e. Canon uses the term Speedlite. It is a product name. I am okay with that.

And then there is speedlight spelt s p e e d l i g h t. That is a more generic term for a flash gun. And that does not make sense. Well, I guess it does. Thinking about it, there are worse terms out there.

But a flashgun isn’t a gun. It is not a gun, but to be fair, it does flash.

And you attach your speedlight to your camera using the hot shoe. Not a shoe, and it is not hot. The only word in there that makes sense is flash. I covered hot shoe very briefly in the last episode—neither a shoe nor hot. Move on, Rick.

On an iPhone, it is called flash. Which makes sense.

Flashlight? Oh, I don’t know. That is a torch.

Flash works just fine.

Move on, Rick.

Camera shake

Camera shake is when you take a photo handheld, and you do not get a sharp photo because the camera moved when you took the photo. But is the camera actually shaking? Are you shaking? Do you have to be shaking for this to happen?

No, of course, you don’t.

Put this one in Google, and there are more references to adding camera shake than there are to stopping it from happening.

Really. Yes, really, as though this is a cool thing to add to a photo.

Let’s go back to that beginner photographer. You hear about the term camera shake and are confused. Well, you would be, wouldn’t you?

So you go to your search engine of choice and put the term camera shake in, and you get loads of results about what camera shake is, but also loads of results for adding camera shake effects to photos.

So you are being told at the same time how to avoid camera shake, which you must do, but also how to add camera shake to photos that don’t have it.

What chance does that person have?

Camera shake happens when you take a photo and the camera moves faster than the camera shutter. If you take a photo at, say, 1/10,000th second and move, there is less chance of getting camera shake than if you take a handheld photo at 1/60th second or less of course.

Camera shake is when the camera moves faster than the shutter can open and close, causing a blurry photo.

The general rule of thumb is this: to avoid camera shake when taking photos handheld, you should use a shutter speed that is faster than the reciprocal of the focal length.

Focal length again. Hmmmm. Don’t worry; this is not as bad as it seems.

If you have a focal length of 100mm, your shutter speed needs to be 1/100th second or faster.

Combine this with an excellent image capture technique, and you should be fine and produce shake-free photos!

But camera shake is not caused by the camera or the photographer shaking.

Stops

A stop is a halving or a doubling of the light. There are three different things that directly affect the exposure: aperture, shutter speed and ISO. These all have completely different scales. The numbers are completely different, but the halving or doubling applies.

Someone somewhere decided that to help us, we would have the term stop. And it makes sense to do this to a point.

OK, you are taking a photo and the aperture and shutter speed values to give a correct exposure are

F5.6, 1/500th second.

If you change the aperture from f/5.6 to f/8, this is one-stop, making the aperture smaller by one stop, meaning you are reducing the amount of light getting through to the camera sensor by one half. This is a one-stop adjustment.

But you had the correct exposure before you changed the aperture, and you changed the aperture by one stop, so your photo will be overexposed. To correct this, you need to choose a shutter speed one stop slower, a shorter exposure time, doubling the amount of light getting through to the camera sensor.

That would be 1/250th second.

A stop is a doubling or halving of the light.

But does the term stop make sense?

No. It does not. What actually is a stop? We have full stops but they are nothing to do with photography!!

F-stop

F-stop. I had to go and make a cuppa before getting stuck into this one, which will be a separate episode in the New Year. Well, it was, but I have had a better idea, so that has been pushed back to mid-July 2024 at the moment and will drift further into oblivion.

Search in the Google for “What are f-stops on a camera?” and one of the top answers is this.

“the f in f-stop stands for the focal length of the lens.” Does it really? No wonder there is confusion. But there is some truth in this, as the aperture value relates to the ratio of the lens focal length and the size of the opening in the lens, the aperture. But this does not help us to take a photo.

No, here we go into another mucky mess of ratios, focal lengths and numbers that have no real meaning to the person taking a photo.

F-stop, that is, f, dash and then stop, is simply the aperture value. You know, f/2.8, f/4 etc. And that is a small f, forward slash and then the number.

Aperture value is a better term. I covered aperture and aperture scale in the last episode. But for my benchmark person who has got into photography using their phone, this is another term that is just going to confuse. After stops we don't need f-stop do we?

Fast lens

What is a fast lens? It is a camera lens with a large maximum aperture. It allows you to use faster shutter speeds as the larger aperture lets more light in.

Or you could do exactly the same by using a slower lens and putting the camera on a tripod.

Or you could do exactly the same by choosing a higher ISO value.

But is a fast lens fast? No, it is not.

And put fast lens into search engines and you get loads of info about erm welding gear no less!

A fast lens is not a fast lens; it is a lens with a larger maximum aperture. And it is bigger, heavier and more expensive, by the way.

A 50mm lens with a maximum aperture of f/1.4 would be called a fast lens. The same lens with an aperture of f/4 would not be called a slow lens. It would just be a lens.

So, a fast lens does not make sense.

JPEG

Now, I have nothing against the good folk at the Joint Photography Experts Group, who created this file format so there was a universal file format for photos that anyone could use. That is to be applauded forever and a day.

I'm not trying to take this recognition away from them, but surely there is a better term for the universal file format. You will find it abbreviated to JPG as well, which is less than helpful. They are the same, the only difference being the letter E, or the lack of the letter E.

Anyway, enough of that – I guess I should be grateful for the standardisation! Don’t get me started on ISO again, though!

RAW

RAW. Camera RAW.

RAW is a file format, as is JPEG. Actually, Canon refers to it as an image quality setting. Basically, a RAW photo has minimal processing done to it and has not been compressed. A JPEG file, however, has had processing done to the image and is compressed.

A RAW file gives you the RAW data to work with. But when you take a photo in RAW, you are probably looking at a JPEG preview on your LCD screen or EVF - how confusing is that??? This is because raw files look rubbish until they have been edited.

Again, it's a term that could be better, but I guess it makes sense, so I am thinking of letting this one go. But then again, as a newbie getting into photography do RAW and JPEG make sense?

Hmmmmmm.

That was the answery bit. Here is the talky bit

I am not belittling these terms and those who have gone before, much cleverer folks than me, who have got photography to where it is today – a technological wonder that I have loved for most of my life. So, I need to get that one out of the way.

And I get that many of these terms make sense and have evolved over the years and have helped, like I say, to make photography what it is today.

So, all is fine; all of these things have a place in time, and that is the point.

Do these terms have a place in photography in 2023?

Oh yes, I am also not belittling mobile phone photography. If people want to take photos with their phones, then that is, of course, fine. Photos taken with phones are just as valid as those taken with cameras.

It is what is in the photo and how it is taken that counts. Every year, the gap closes between the quality of images you can create with a phone and a camera.

But, in 2023, I still use a camera to take photos. And there is so much more you can get out of photography when you progress from a phone to a camera.

But we have to make this easy for people. This is my problem with these terms; they are barriers stopping people from going further into photography. If we do not make photography more accessible to non-photographers, photography will end up being phones only. We need to give people easier access to photography plain and simple.

Do we want that?

Traditionalists hang on to these terms. I do, but at least as a traditionalist myself, I can see these terms as confusing and contradicting and long for something simpler.

Photography is a genius, brilliant thing that we need to make more accessible to more people.

Remember the benchmark; I have probably said this too many times. Someone taking photos with a phone, where they simply take the phone out of their pocket/ bag/ whatever, and erm take a photo.

Why would they need a camera? Why would they ever need to be able to do more than that?

And as the tech develops and evolves, and as AI kicks in and grows, are we in danger of losing photography as an art form to digital technology?

There are those who, as AI and tech evolve, crave the old days, simpler days, days when we humans were the creative force. I am one of those people. But I do not want to hang on to exposure triangle, mirrorless camera, dslr camera, high dynamic range, that kind of stuff. No, I want to take the best photos that I can with the minimum fuss and effort.

There will always be a demand for photographs taken by not only professional photographers but also us mere people - photos as things of beauty can be created by machines, but are just not the same. And a machine cannot appreciate a good photo the same way a human can.

No, photography is an art form that needs to be protected and updated to make it attractive to people in 2023. A photo is a work of art. Well it should be.

But if photography ends up being people taking photos with phones, is that actually bad?

Hmm, that's an interesting thought to finish on there.

That is my 31 stupid photography terms done. But hang on Rick, there were only 30? I know. I know. I did have image stabilisation in there but took it out because I was OK with it in the end. When you put that next to APS-C, f/stop and all that other not-so-good stuff, it seemed almost wrong to bring image stabilisation to the stupid photography terms party.

What if I use my phone to take photos and not a camera?

You only care about most of this stuff if you want to go from using your phone to take photos to buying a camera to take photos with. And that is why I am writing this stuff; this is why I am banging on about this stuff. Each of these terms is a potential blocker to someone getting more into photography.

But, if you use a phone to take photos, you don’t care about this stuff. You take photos with your phone. And there is nothing wrong with that.

What if I use a film camera?

JPEG and RAW aside, it all applies. These terms probably made more sense in the pre-digital age. Yes, people, there was a time before digital stuff. While these terms would have made more sense, they sure don’t now, do they?

What do I do?

Explain stuff. And I am trying to make photography more accessible in 2023 and beyond before photography is camera phones and no more. And I photograph buildings, let's not forget that. I specialise in real estate photography, architectural photography and construction photography. And I write and talk about photography.

That is what I do.

Some thoughts from the last episode

Photography Explained Podcast Episode 169 - 11 More Stupid Photography Terms That Don't Make Sense

You have probably got the idea by now. I think that I have said enough. But, if there is a stupid photography term that you don’t like that I have not covered let me know – I am more than happy to do a follow-up episode in 2024 with all the stuff that I missed, forgot, or did not know about.

I feel a bit mean for having a pop at street photography to be honest. No offense street photographers out there ok?

Next episode

My plan for the future of photography - something different - update the terms and make it more accessible to people - part 1 – intro.

That is the working title at the moment! Something to do with the future of photography. And then, 10 episodes, one after the other, on photography basics – yes, I will be getting right back to the beginning of how to get into photography. And I can’t wait to get stuck into that little lot. I really can’t wait.

Ask me a question.

If you have a question you would like me to answer, the best way is to head over to the photography explained podcast website - photographyexplainedpodcast.com/start, where you can find out what to do. And feel free to say hi. It would be lovely to hear from you.

I am done.

This episode was brought to you by, erm, a cheese and pickle sandwich and a bag of salt and vinegar crisps washed down with an ice-cold Diet Pepsi before I settled in my homemade, acoustically cushioned recording emporium.

I've been Rick McEvoy; thanks again very much for listening to my small but perfectly formed podcast (it says here) and for giving me 27 ish minutes of your valuable time. I reckon this episode will be about 25 minutes long after I have edited out the mistakes and other bad stuff.

Take care, and stay safe.

Cheers from me, Rick