Hi, and a very warm welcome to Episode 168 of the Photography Explained podcast. I’m your host, Rick, and in each episode, I will try to explain one photographic thing to you in plain English in less than 27 minutes (ish) without the irrelevant details. I’m a professionally qualified photographer based in England with a lifetime of photographic experience, which I share with you in my podcast.
Here is the answery bit
Photography has evolved a lot over the years to where we are today. Photography terminology has not. There are photography terms that simply are not relevant in 2023. Just think about someone getting started in photography in 2023 with a phone. Hold that thought – here are the terms that I am going to talk about.
And there were so many that this is part 1 – yes, there are far too many photography and technical terms that don’t make sense any more for one episode! 31 of them. Blimey. That is a lot! And when I say don’t make sense anymore, some terms need a serious upgrade, even if the term makes sense or has a historical logic to it.
And I am sure there are more that I have not considered. And if you, dear listener, have any nonsense photography terms you want me to talk about, please let me know – more on that later.
You can listen to the episode here.
Or read on – up to you!
I will try to develop more sensible alternatives for some of these. But here are the first 11 stupid terms.
- APS-C
- Mirrorless camera
- DSLR
- Full frame
- Cropped sensor
- Micro four thirds
- Exposure triangle
- Shutter speed
- Aperture
- Aperture scale
- ISO
I will save the other 20 for the next episode. Let’s get the first one out of the way right now.
APS-C
Why are we still using this term? Why?? APS-C was an innovation in the 1990s. An innovation in film cameras long before digital cameras were ever a thing. You could choose from three different aspect ratios or shapes and sizes of photos. One of those was, I think, called C, and an APS-C sensor is roughly the same size. And that is it – digital images roughly the same size as film negatives?
So, how is the term APS-C relevant today in the modern world of digital photography? It makes as much sense to call a full-frame camera a 35mm camera; this makes much more sense. Or Bob.
Terms like this need to be got rid of straight away. My benchmark is always someone trying to get into photography, often having started taking photos on their phone. They see the term APS-C and try to understand what it means. And what will they think if they get to the root of the term?
I have no idea why this term ever made it to digital photography. It has no place in photography in 2023, well, 2003, to be honest, and it should be immediately outlawed.
Mirrorless camera
Go into a camera shop. Say you want to buy a new camera, and you will probably be asked if you want a mirrorless camera. Or a mirrorless camera will get said somewhere. There is nothing against the good folk who work in camera shops; the world would be much worse without them.
No, mirrorless camera is a term used all the time in photography.
Let’s think about that—a mirrorless camera. Now, I have just started getting into photography, and I want to buy a camera. One of the first things I faced was the term mirrorless camera.
Why would a camera have a mirror in it? Why am I being asked that?
Now, of course, a mirrorless camera is an evolution of the DSLR camera, which does have a mirror. But as I have never heard of the term DSLR before, I wouldn’t know this, would I? Whilst there is a logical explanation for the term, it is time we moved on, right?
Why not call a mirrorless camera, erm, a camera? I will come onto DSLR next. I mean, what is the point of this term? Mirrorless camera, that is.
OK – move on, Rick.
DSLR
DSLR – digital single-lens reflex camera.
Digital – I am OK with that.
Single/ lens – what does this mean? When would you ever have more than one lens on a camera?
Reflex – what is that all about?
This goes back in time. You used to look through a different lens than the one you took a photo of. Then, a mirror was introduced to let you look through the lens you took the photo of. That is the reflex bit, the mirror. Single is single, and now this all makes sense.
So, the term makes sense; of course, it does. It just isn’t the best term to describe what, after all, is a camera!
OK – the next logical question after DSLR is this
Full frame camera
A camera’s sensor is fundamental to photography. A full frame camera is a camera that has a sensor that is the same size as the negative was in 35mm film. It is 36mm x 24mm. That is it. They were the same.
But where does 35mm fit into this? Well, 35mm was the height of the camera film, including the sprockets top and bottom – the things we attached to the thing that moved the film on.
In very crude terms, take a 35mm camera, aka a single lens reflex camera, remove the film chamber, add a digital sensor and voila – you have a DSLR.
As to where the words full frame fit in, I can only assume that this was the full frame of the negative, making this term equally obscure. If there is a more precise definition of what the word full frame means in this context, I haven’t found them.
So DSLR is a factually correct but very unhelpful term, in my humble opinion.
Cropped sensor camera
Well, it sort of makes sense, the full-frame camera being cropped to make a smaller sensor. But if you think about it, it does not make sense. Cropped from what and cropped into what? No, it does not make sense. The term cropped sensor camera does not make sense.
Micro four thirds camera
OK. It just gets worse. Going back to a full-frame camera, this has a sensor size which is 36mm x 24mm. This is an aspect ratio of 3:2. Which in English is the ratio of the width and height.
Cropped sensor cameras have the same 3:2 aspect ratio.
But micro four thirds cameras have an aspect ratio of 4:3, hence the name. Well, sort of. Is this a four thirds sensor?
I don’t know; I don’t understand what this term actually means, which tells us all we need to know as I have a micro four thirds camera.
But I can tell you that the micro four thirds camera system differs from the full frame and cropped sensor mirrorless and DSLR cameras.
I have not added aspect ratio to this list as I was at risk of going on forever and questioning almost all photography terminology.
Back to my camera shop analogy. You go in and want to buy a camera. You are offered a micro four thirds camera. What is that you ask? Micro Four Thirds is a camera system developed by Olympus and Panasonic. The cameras have the same lens mount and are smaller than cropped sensor cameras or full-frame cameras.
OK, that’s great; what does micro four thirds actually mean?
It means the sensor has an aspect ratio of 4:3 and not 3:2.
At this point, most sane people would leave the shop and return to taking photos with their phones.
OK, I have a problem with these terms.
And another thing. I’m sorry. Is a micro four thirds camera a mirrorless camera? Yes, it is. But we tend to call them micro four thirds cameras. The mirrorless camera term tends to refer to cropped sensor and full frame cameras, which have evolved from DSLR cameras, which have evolved from 35mm cameras.
(I like my camera shop analogy. I might do a lot more with this!)
So, cameras can be described better, but how? One for a future episode.
Exposure triangle
Well, exposure isn’t great as a term, now I think about it. And the exposure triangle? If you think about it, this doesn’t make sense either.
I mean, how many times will you think about these three things when you are taking photos? You aren’t, are you? If you are in manual mode, you start with the camera settings that you want. And then you change things if you need to. In semi-automatic modes, you change one thing, and the camera changes the other. In automatic modes, you accept what the camera decides or use the minimal adjustments available.
But how many times have you actually used the exposure triangle? We have all seen the pictures of the triangle, with aperture, shutter speed and ISO on the triangle’s three sides. I have made one of my own, the same as all the others.
But have you ever used this triangle?
I haven’t. Ever.
Shutter speed
I used to be happy with shutter speed right up to the point when I thought about it.
The shutter speed is not the shutter speed. It is the time the camera sensor is exposed to light after you have pressed the shutter button. So, exposure time would be a much more logical term. A long exposure time makes more sense than a slow shutter speed – but they are the same.
How fast does the shutter move? No idea. What is the right shutter speed? No idea. What is the speed of the shutter? No idea. And how fast the shutter moves is irrelevant. What is relevant is the amount of time that the camera sensor, or camera film, let’s not forget, is exposed to light. The camera is a lightproof box, after all.
Exposure time – that works.
Aperture
This is a good one. A camera lens has an aperture and a hole in the middle. The aperture is the device that changes the size of the hole in the lens. If you shoot at maximum aperture, the aperture does not do anything. So, I could add maximum aperture to this list. I won’t; I will cover it here quickly.
If you make the aperture smaller, you are making the lens hole smaller, allowing less light in. But aperture as a term does not work; it is the size of the hole we are interested in.
Aperture scale
F/2. F/2.8. f/4. F/5.6. F/8. Wide aperture. Small aperture. Narrow aperture. Small aperture. I could go on. I won’t.
What do these numbers actually mean? What do these numbers actually stand for?
I have no idea. I know the aperture scale has stops, which are a halving or a doubling of light. But if we got rid of the aperture range and went with 1-10, would it make any difference? No, it would not.
A larger aperture value gives more depth of field. A smaller aperture value gives a shallow depth of field. I will cover that later. A smaller aperture gives less depth of field. The maximum aperture gives the smallest depth of field but also probably the least quality of images, with softening around the edges and other bad stuff. The minimum aperture gives the most depth of field and potentially other lens errors.
The maximum aperture is the smallest number but the largest opening in the lens. The minimum aperture is the largest number but the smallest opening in the lens.
Clear?
Every lens has a sweet spot, the sharpest image quality, with the least optical errors. That is never the maximum or the minimum aperture, I am happy to say.
So, the aperture scale is factually and numerically correct, but, in reality, it is irrelevant numerical nonsense that needs modernising. No, I don’t know how to do this; I’m just saying that it is unhelpful at best.
Also, you shouldn’t bother about what the numbers actually mean; you need to know how these numbers affect how you take photos.
ISO
ISO. This should have been term number 2 after APS-C.
What does ISO stand for? International Standards Organisation? No. That is called the International Organisation for Standardisation. So, it is not even the International Standards Organisation.
It comes from the Greek word isos, which means equal. So why not call it Isos? As a term, it does not make sense.
ISO in photography relates to the sensitivity of the camera sensor to light. However, changing the ISO does not change the sensor’s sensitivity to light. That is fixed. Change the ISO, and you electronically amplify the signal and make a photo brighter. Yes, change the ISO settings, and you are changing, in effect, the brightness.
This term is so badly understood that it really needs getting rid of. Good point, Rick, well said. And you could change it to, well, I don’t know. How about Brightness? But don’t turn the brightness up too much or you will get noise. Yes, noise gets covered later, don’t worry.
And I come back to ISO in the talky bit of this episode, too.
OK – that is the first 11 – now for balance
Here are five photography terms that I’m happy with
- Maximum aperture
- Minimum aperture
- Tripod
- L bracket
- Memory card
Here is the talky bit
These nonsensical terms alienate people from photography. They confuse. They make photography appear more complicated than it is. They are barriers to people getting into photography. They have no place in real life. Professional photographers understand this stuff, but others don’t, and it is no surprise. Being a good photographer should not be a technical exercise.
Photography is drawing with light. The most important thing in photography is what you include in a photo, what you are taking a photo of. A camera is merely a tool to help you to do that. Take a photo. That is all it is. The final image is what matters. That is all people see, after all.
A camera is a lightproof box with a hole in it. The camera sensor in the lightproof box converts the light into digital data. The lens focuses the light onto the sensor.
The amount of light that gets through to the camera sensor is determined by
- how long the sensor is exposed to light
- and how much light gets through the hole, which depends on how large or small it is. And all the other stuff in the camera changes one of these two things.
That is photography.
Gear allows us photographers to change the field of view, getting a wider field of view with a wide-angle lenses and less field of view with a telephoto lens. And both with a zoom lens. Wide angle makes perfect sense, and telephoto does not. Please don’t get me going again.
As for the gear, you get cameras and lenses with different levels of quality and complexity, giving you more options than you could possibly ever need to take photos. Technology helps us – in the film days, you did not have an LCD screen to look at! Imagine that!
As for the camera settings, you have the two variables.
1 – The time the sensor is exposed to light, which turns out to be the shutter speed.
2 – How much light gets through to the sensor? Which is called the aperture.
I know there is ISO, a term truly deserving of the scrap heap photographically. When a manufacturer makes a camera, they give it a native ISO. This is often the lowest ISO value. With the native ISO, the camera is performing as designed. If you change to a higher ISO number, you are telling the camera to amplify what is being recorded electronically.
The native ISO is the one that you should be using. You should change the ISO when you cannot get a fast enough shutter speed to get a sharp photo. But first, use a tripod or other support. Do this stuff properly.
In this bit, I have summed up photography. The rest is stuff around the edges for me.
I take photos on a tripod. I set the ISO to 100. And that is it.
That is what matters.
And the other thing I want to say here is that I know that I am not explaining one photographic thing in this episode; I am explaining a lot. I wanted to do something different, and I am really enjoying this. When I started writing this, it was meant to be one episode, but I soon realised that was not going to happen, and it ended up being two episodes, with a third arising out of it, which I will come onto.
I wanted to finish the year with something a bit different, hopefully interesting, hopefully amusing, and all good stuff.
Once I have redefined my future of photography, I will get back to explaining photography stuff again and add a new section – what should this be called in 2024?
What if I use my phone to take photos and not a camera?
You take photos. You don’t have to worry about this stuff. End of. Simple. Sorted. Move on, Rick.
Oh no, sorry. You might want a camera. You go into a camera shop and are offered mirrorless cameras, DSLR Cameras, micro four thirds cameras, and cropped sensor cameras. And you think, really?
You probably leave and stick with your phone.
What if I use a film camera?
Then you probably have a 35mm camera, and all is good. I do not even know if other sizes of film cameras are available anymore. Sure, there must be the odd one, but 35mm is by far the most commonly found, as these are the precursors to DLSR cameras.
No, you have your film camera and are happy. Nice.
What do I do?
I bang on about this stuff, don’t I? I need to move on.
Some thoughts from the last episode
I don’t use a lot of gear. I use very little gear. And I like this. And I do what I do the same way every time. See, I have gotten to the point in my life where photography is about what I include in a photo. I am not that interested in all the other stuff.
So I don’t have a lot of gear, and taking care of it is a doddle. I have made photography simple and easy for me. And my photos are better as a result.
Take that thought, dear listener – photography is drawing with light – photography is all about what you take a photo of first and how second.
Next episode
Well, the other 20 things that don’t make sense any more. Including
- Focal length
- High dynamic range
- Depth of field (or, as I call it – depth of sharpness)
11 More Stupid Photography Terms That Don’t Make Sense
Ask me a question.
If you have a question you would like me to answer, the best way is to head over to the 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
OK – that was the podcast episode.
Want to know more?
Head over to the Start page on the Photography Explained Podcast website to find out more.
And here is the list of episodes published to date – you can listen to any episode straight from this page which is nice.
Let me know if there is a photography thing that you want me to explain and I will add it to my list. Just head over to the This is my list of things to explain page of this website to see what is on there already.
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And finally a little bit about me
Finally, yes this paragraph is all about me – check out my Rick McEvoy Photography website to find out more about me and my architectural, construction, real estate and travel photography work. I also write about general photography stuff, all in plain English without the irrelevant detail.
Thank you
Thanks for listening to my podcast (if you did) and reading this blog post (which I assume you have done as you are reading this).
Cheers from me Rick
