Digital camera jargon buster
- Which? translates technical digital camera terms into plain English
- How to separate your ISO from your hot shoe
- Avoid red-eye, adjust your white-balance and reduce noise in your photos
Aperture priority
A digital camera with aperture priority is good for portraits
A feature that gives you control over whether the background of your picture is in focus or not.
If you were taking a photograph of someone in Piccadilly Circus in London, for example, you might want the background out of focus so all the signs in the distance don't make the shot too complicated.
You can change this manually by adjusting the camera's f-value using aperture priority, stepping in closer to the subject and zooming in.
Burst mode
This lets you take several pictures quickly in succession until you take your finger off the shutter button, useful when you want to take pictures of fast-moving action.
Digital single-lens reflex
Digital single-lens reflex cameras (DSLRs) let you change the lens to suit the type of picture you’re taking. You can use the starter lens that comes with the camera for everyday pictures and buy additional lenses for better photographs.
Hot shoes are usually found on top-end digital cameras
Hot shoe
This small attachment at the top of some cameras is for adding an external flash – useful for illuminating subjects more than a few metres away.
ISO
The higher the ISO, the more sensitive the camera is to light, helping you achieve blur-free, pictures without flash. You have the option to set it manually on all our cameras. However, the higher you set the ISO, the more ‘noise’ you get in your photos.
Macro mode
Use your camera's macro mode for detailed close-ups
Often indicated by a little icon of a flower, macro mode helps you take highly detailed close-ups.
Megapixels (Mp)
Pixels are tiny dots of colour that make up a digital image – 5Mp is five million pixels, for example. More pixels means more detail in the picture taken, which will allow you to create larger prints.
Noise
The higher you set the ISO on your camera, the more ‘noise’ you get in your photos. This appears as small, coloured speckles and it can detract from picture quality.
PictBridge
Connect your camera to a PictBridge-enabled printer and you can print your photos at home without using a computer. Almost all cameras have a Pictbridge feature.
You can also print on a home printer without a computer if your printer has a memory card slot. Simply insert your camera’s memory card.
Red-eye reduction
In poor light, the pupil of the eye opens wide to allow more light to get to the retina. But this means that when the flash goes off, some of the light is reflected back and gives the appearance of red eyes.
When you use red-eye reduction, the flash goes off before the photo is taken so the subject’s pupils have time to narrow and less light is reflected back from the retina. All the models in our test have flash red-eye reduction.
For action shots, buy a camera with shutter speed priority
Shutter speed priority mode
This feature is ideal for Saturday morning football when you want to capture fast-moving action or deliberately blur an image to show movement.
A shutter speed of 1/500 will give you a crisp shot of that penalty while 1/30 will show the ball moving in a blur.
White balance
Light always appears white to the naked eye. In fact it takes different colours depending on the source; from household light bulbs to natural daylight. So a photo taken indoors by the light of a standard ceiling bulb may come out with a slight yellowish cast.
Digital cameras have a feature called auto white balance, which ensures the true colours (as our eyes would see them) are shown.
Sometimes the camera struggles though, especially with close-ups or scenes dominated by a single colour – the sky for example. To counter this, there are manually-selectable white balance settings, like daylight (for sunny days), cloudy (overcast days), or tungsten (for ordinary household light bulbs).
You can also use custom white balance mode to help achieve the most natural colours. Point the camera at something pure white, like a piece of paper, and the camera will evaluate the light conditions and set its white balance accordingly.
Looking to buy a new digital camera? Read the Which? guide to choosing and buying a digital camera, or if you're in the market for a more advanced camera, check out our guide to buying the best digital SLR camera.
Find a better deal
Call Which? Switch on 01992 822867 to speak to an advisor about switching your energy provider
Which? Switch