With auto white balance, the camera attempts to determine the

auto white balance (AWB)

color temperature of the light and automatically adjust for that

color temperature. Many people just leave the camera set to

 

 

auto white balance all the time.

 

 

Charge Coupled Device (CCD)

A type of silicon integrated circuit used to convert light into an

electronic signal.

 

 

 

compression

The process of encoding information using fewer bits cf. image

compression, sound fi le compression

 

 

 

 

A standardized ASCII fi le created in a digital camera and stored

Digital Print Order Format

on removable media along with the image fi les that indicate how

(DPOF)

many copies of which images should be printed. It also allows

 

index prints, cropping, and text overlays to be specifi ed.

 

 

 

A camera incorporating an image sensor which outputs a digital

digital still camera (DSC)

signal representing a still picture, or records a digital signal

representing a still picture on a removable medium, such as a

 

 

memory card or magnetic disk.

 

 

dynamic range

cf. ISO DSC dynamic range, colour gamut, luminance ratio

 

 

 

A compressed fi le format for digital cameras in which the images

 

are compressed using the baseline JPEG standard, described in

Exif/JPEG

ISO 12234-2, and metadata and thumbnail images are stored

 

using TIFF tags within an application segment at the beginning

 

of the JPEG fi le.

 

 

 

A numerical value that is inversely proportional to the exposure

exposure index

provided to an image sensor to obtain an image. Images

obtained from a camera using a range of exposure index values

 

 

will normally provide a range of image quality levels.

 

 

 

A numerical value calculated from the exposure provided at the

 

focal plane of an electronic camera to produce specifi ed camera

ISO speed

output signal characteristics using the methods described in the

referenced standard. The ISO speed should correlate with the

 

 

highest exposure index value that provides peak image quality

 

for normal scenes.

 

 

ix