Digital cameras: Digital camera jargon buster
Digital cameras - plain-English guide
The best digital cameras often feature a host of features designed to help you get the most out of your digital photography. Such technical terms can often be bewildering, and can put off the novice photographer from attempting to use the more advanced digital camera features at their disposal.
Use our digital camera jargon buster if you are in any doubt about the technical words you may find in your instruction manual or in our own expert Which? digital camera reviews.
For more on getting the most out of your digital camera, check our guide to digital camera features, as well as our expert advice on digital photography and video.
Aperture priority
A digital camera with aperture priority is good for portrait shots
A digital camera 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 digital camera's f-value using Aperture Priority, stepping in closer to the subject and zooming in.
Digital camera burst mode
This lets you take several pictures quickly in succession until you take your finger off the digital camera's shutter button, useful when you want to take pictures of fast-moving action.
Digital single lens reflex
Digital single lens reflex cameras (DSLR) 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 shoe attachments are usually found on top-end digital cameras
Hot shoe
This small attachment at the top of some digital cameras is for adding an external flash – useful for illuminating subjects more than a few metres away.
Digital camera ISO
The higher the digital camera's ISO number, the more sensitive the digital camera is to light, helping you achieve blur-free, pictures without flash. You have the option to set it manually on all the cameras in the Which? digital camera reviews. However, the higher you set the ISO, the more ‘noise’ you get in your photos.
Macro mode on digital cameras
Use your digital camera on macro mode for detailed close-ups
Often indicated by a little icon of a flower on the digital camera's controls, macro mode helps you take highly detailed close-ups.
Digital camera megapixels (Mp)
Pixels are tiny dots of colour that make up a digital image – 5Mp is 5 million pixels, for example. Digital cameras with 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 digital camera, the more ‘noise’ you get in your photos. This appears as small, coloured speckles and it can detract from picture quality. See our guide to reducing noise in photos.
PictBridge
Connect your digital camera to a PictBridge enabled printer and you can print your photos at home without using a computer. Practically all digital 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 digital camera’s memory card.
Digital camera 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, when the digital camera's flash goes off, some of the light is reflected back and gives the appearance of red eyes.
Use your digital camera's red-eye reduction to avoid photos like this
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 digital cameras in the Which? digital camera reviews have flash red-eye reduction. Also see our guide to removing red eye.
Shutter speed priority mode
This digital camera 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.
The best digital cameras for creative action shots have shutter speed priority mode
White balance: digital cameras
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 digital 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 digital camera at something pure white, like a piece of paper, and the camera will evaluate the light conditions and set its white balance accordingly.