CTE DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY STUDY GUIDE
Camera Information, Techniques and Tools
 When backpacking, take the lightest weight camera with you to use, which will be
either a point and shoot or your phone camera
 Digital camera images are recorded on memory cards
 Digital cameras, compared to point and shoot cameras, are larger and more
expensive
 Digital SLR uses interchangeable lenses, especially when shooting sports
 Digital zoom – when you zoom in, pixels get bigger. Found on point and shoot
cameras and cell phone cameras.
 DSLR – digital single lens reflex (camera)
 Equipment used for downloading images: cables (cords connected to your
camera), card readers, drives
 Less light entering a camera makes an image appear darker
 Memory cards: compact flash (thumb drive or flash drive), secure digital (the SD
card in your camera), sony memory stick (external device), compact disc (CD),
internal storage (memory built into the camera). Where digital images are stored in
your camera.
 Monopod – a one legged camera support used often by sports photographers for
lens stability
 More light entering a camera makes an image appear lighter
 On camera direct flash produces photo with harsh or bright lighting
 Point and shoot – camera with the least control
 Photo memory – SD or XD cards, compact memory (Thumb drives)
 Pushing the shutter release button down halfway focuses and measures the light
 Optical zoom - when you zoom in, pixels stay as small as they were, giving you a
sharper, clearer photo. Found on digital SLRs. Uses OPTICS.
 Red eye – caused when the flash from your camera reflects the blood in the back of
your eye back into the photo
 Shutter release button – the button on the camera body that you press down
halfway to measure light and focus a photo on auto focus and that you press down
all the way to take a photo
 The biggest difference between film and digital cameras is the way they
capture photos (on film with emulsion or digitally in memory or on SD Cards)
 Use a tripod when the shutter speed is bulb or 1 second or to stabilize your camera
 Viewfinder – the part of a camera that you look through in order to compose your
photo
Camera Lenses
 Lens – the external part of a camera that connects to the camera body. On a digital
SLR (single lens reflex) camera, the lens is interchangeable (with zoom, telephoto,
wide angle, macro, etc. lenses)
 Macro lens – gets very close to your subject, often within inches. Shallow depth of
field
 Portrait lens – creates a shallow depth of field every time (blurry background) to
bring attention to the subject
 Telephoto lens - gets closer to your subject with one focal length (distance from
your subject)
 Wide angle lens – includes more in the photo from left to right
 Zoom lens – gets closer to your subject by allowing you to choose one of many focal
lengths (distances from your subject)
Camera Settings
 100 is best ISO for bright light conditions
 1600 or higher is best ISO for low light or dark conditions
 (A)perture priority – you choose the aperture setting (f-stop) and the camera
chooses the shutter speed
 Auto (flash off) (lightning bolt) mode – auto flash is disabled so the flash won’t go
off, shutter speed and fstop are set automatically by the camera
 (full) auto mode – the camera sets everything – shutter speed and aperture or
f/stop
 Bulb: the shutter stays open as long as the shutter release button is pushed down
 Close up (flower) mode – reds and greens are pumped up or elevated, camera
selects a center focus, the flash may pop up if needed
 Continuous shoot or burst (not a mode) – when your camera takes many photos
quickly. It sounds like a rapid fire gun and takes 2-10 photos per second, depending
on the camera model. The shutter release button is held down continuously to do
this.
 Camera mode dial or setting – the round knob on top of the camera body with all
the little pictures showing you what camera mode you’re using
 Child (kid) mode – boosts sharpness and saturation for clothing and background
details, softens skin tones to make them look natural
 Fast Shutter Speed to Freeze action with 1/1000 shutter speed or faster
 Hot shoe – the connection point or place on top of your camera where a strobe or
external flash attach to the camera
 Landscape (mountain) mode – broad depth of field, boosts color and saturation,
contrast
 (M)anual mode – you choose the aperture setting and the shutter speed; you have
complete control over the camera settings. You need to set 3 things to get a well
exposed photo: ISO, aperture, and shutter speed
 Mode selector or dial – the dial on top of the camera that allows you to choose
preset camera settings for specific kinds of photos, like a for aperture, p for
program, manual, etc.
 Night Portrait (person with star) mode – slow shutter speed with a flash
 Portrait (woman with hat) mode – softens and slightly blurs the background,
softer skin tones
 (P)rogram or programmable mode – puts the camera in charge of the aperture
(f/stop) and shutter speed, with all other camera settings available for the
photographer to change
 Slow Shutter Speed to Blur action with 1/60 shutter speed or slower
 Sports (runner) mode – high or fast shutter speeds, continuous focus while the
shutter release button is held down halfway, tracking the subject in the center focus
area
Career and Professional Information
 3 things to look at when critiquing photographs: composition, technical skills,
interesting subject matter
 Effective portfolios should include: your best images, name, contact information
 Images that a photographer can ethically use: those captured by the
photographer
 Programs that download images: lightroom, preview, photoshop
 SkillsUSA – career and technical student organization
 student portfolio - 20-30 images
 What’s acceptable without a model release? At a residence, street or park (public
places)
File and Post-Processing Information, Techniques and Tools
 72 pixels per inch (ppi) is best to use on the internet so photos load quickly
 200-300 pixels per inch (ppi) is best to use when printing high quality (8x10)
photographs
 Acid free board should be used to mount or matte photos
 Calibrate a monitor if color is not accurate when you print
 Critiquing photos: composition, technical skills, interesting subject matter
 Digital file formats: raw, tiff, jpeg
 image management – organizing files, photo selection and managing folders
 image transfer- downloading files to a computer
 jpeg (Most common format) (JPEG is a standardized image-compression format.
JPEG compression reduces the file size but has no effect on the number of pixels in
the image (i.e., the resolution). JPEG was designed to compress the file size of photos
and can handle as many colors as are in the picture. It is also lossy, meaning that
some information is lost during compression, and the decompressed image is not a
total match with the original. This means that a little bit of image detail quality is
lost when saved as JPEG.)
 Megapixels (how many pixels?) – 1 million
 Printer profiles for paper types are found in file>print>printer profiles
 raw (A RAW image is the pure data directly saved from the camera's image sensor
onto the card. With other image formats the camera processes the raw data and
converts it to TIFF or JPEG, but with RAW mode the pure data is saved and can be
edited later. RAW files take up 4 times as much memory as TIFF or JPEG files)
 tiff (A TIFF image is an uncompressed image showing the full detail of the image
with no quality loss. TIFF images are very large and can take large amounts of
storage space and can take a long time to save to the memory card. When a TIFF
image is created in the camera, the camera takes the RAW image from the camera's
sensor and converts it into the TIFF format using the settings in the camera's
menus.)
 Workflow: capture, edit, output (export)
History
 George Eastman produced the first mass produced affordable camera available to
the public
 Sony mavica – first digital camera
 The first digital cameras (in the 1960s) were big, expensive, poor quality
Lighting Information, Techniques and Tools
 Fill light illuminates or lightens up shadows
 Key light: the primary light that comes from artificial light sources (that you set up,
like the portrait studio light
Lightroom Information, Techniques and Tools
 Adjustment brush: used to lighten or darken parts of an image
 Spot removal tool gets rid of spots and blemishes on people in portraits
 Vibrance should be adjusted to get colors as correct or accurate as possible
Photo composition Elements of Art and Principles of Design
 Elements of art and principles of design: simplicity, emphasis, rule of thirds,
point of view (bird’s eye, bug’s eye), leading lines
 framing: when something in your photo is physically surrounded by or framed by
something in the photo, like a fence, or a doorway
 Leading lines – like one point perspective. Example: receding railroad tracks
 point of view: angle at which the photo was taken – bird’s eye is when the photo
was taken above the subject
 Point of view: bug’s eye is when the photo was taken below the subject
 symmetry/asymmetry: equal similar things on either side of a photo/unequal
things
 merger or forced perspective: when 2 unrelated things not near one another line
up and look like they’re touching, like when a person looks like they’re holding the
Eiffel tower or a landmark or something appears to come out of a person’s head, like
a tree
 Rule or law of thirds – when a composition is covered with a rule of thirds grid
(like a tic tac toe grid), the most important features in the composition will fall
either on an intersection or on one of the lines of the tic tac toe grid. Used to
stabilize or ground your composition.
 simplicity: concentrate on a few basic elements, highlighting only those
components that add to your composition, emphasis: when a light object or shape
is next to a dark object or shape in order to bring the viewer’s attention to the object
or shape
Photoshop Information, Techniques and Tools
 100% opacity – completely saturated with color or pigment; the opposite of
transparent or see-through
 adjust tonal range (histogram and levels)
 Black and white conversion (from a color photo to a black and white photo) –
hue/saturation, grayscale mode
 Burn tool – used to darken select parts of a photo
 Clipping mask – apply a photo over a large shape or object that you selected, copied
and pasted onto its own layer
 Clone stamp tool – selects one area of a photo to clone or copy onto another area of
a photo. Uses a target and the OPT + Click to establish the targeted area to copy
elsewhere. Selects a clean area of a photo to cover blemishes and spots using a
circle)
 Color correction – variations, (image/adjustments) color balance,
(image/adjustments) hue/saturation and (image/adjustments) levels
 Contact sheet (index print) – a page or pages of thumbnails or smaller versions of
your photos used to review and analyze your photos or archive a photo shoot
 contrast, and color correction (image/adjustments)
 crop tool - adjust the size or resolution of an image
 Dodge tool – used to lighten select parts of a photo
 Edit/transform: scale, rotate, skew, flip, distort, warp
 Edit/Transform scale: size
 Edit/Transform rotate: arbitrary by using the ruler tool to define where the photo
should be straightened to
 Edit/Transform skew: allows you to move each of the four corners of a selected
rectangular area in directions other than up or down or left or right (at angles)
 Edit/Transform flip: allows you to flip horizontally or vertically
 Edit/Transform distort: change where the four corners of an image are (like one
point perspective on the text assignment)
 Edit/Transform warp: adjust many points of an object to change its shape
 Eye dropper – allows you sample color form another part of the image
 healing brushes (spot healing)
 Histogram – a graph of all tones in an image or distribution of light
 Image/adjust: hue/saturation, brightness/contrast)
 Image/adjust brightness: how light or dark a photo is
 Image/adjust contrast: how dark are the darks and how light are the lights (high
contrast – darks are very dark and lights are very light)
 Image/Adjust hue: color name (like green)
 Image/adjust saturation: how opaque (rich with color) an object is
 image editing : straighten, rotate, limited crop, adjust tonal range, contrast
and color correction
 Lasso: selects an area using a continuous line around it
 Layers pallet – active layer (highlighted), layer order (the layer on top is the layer
you see first, like turning a stack of glass panes, each with part of the composition on
it, sideways and looking through it to see all the layers at one time), creating and
deleting layers, opacity of a layer (adjusted on the layers palette)
 Less than 100% opacity creates a checkerboard pattern on your screen
 Levels – a tool which can move and stretch the brightness levels of an image
histogram
 limited crop (use the crop tool as usual)
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magic wand: selects an area of like pixels based on common value
Marquee tool – selects an area using a square, rectangle, oval, ellipse or circle
patch tool (slight feathered edge when placing a patch of the photo elsewhere in the
composition)
Polygonal lasso tool – selects an area using many straight lines to create a polygon
or multi-sided shape
Quick mask lets you select and edit part of an image, not the whole thing. To isolate
a portion of the image to be modified, use a quick mask.
Quick select tool – selects an area with similar pixels
rotate (image/adjustments)
Selection tools: marquee, lasso, magic wand, adding and subtracting to of from
the selection
Shadow/highlight correction – correcting the exposure in shadows or highlights
(S)hutter priority mode – you choose the shutter speed and the camera chooses
the aperture setting or f-stop setting.
Spot healing brush – allows you to drag the mouse over scars or blemishes you
want to remove. It takes the non-scarred area on both sides of where you dragged
the mouse and merges them over the scar or blemish
straighten (use the ruler tool to draw a line and establish what should be parallel or
perpendicular to the bottom of the composition; Image/adjustments,
rotate/arbitrary)
Techniques for improving images: healing brushes, patch tool, clone stamp,
sharpening filter
sharpening filter
Text tool – typing words and letters
To quickly change your brush or tool size, use the shortcut by pressing the left
(makes it smaller) or right (makes it bigger) bracket keys
Undo/redo – history pallet, step forward (command Z), step backward
(command Z, option Command Z for multiple steps backward)
When a new layer is created, it is created directly above the layer selected
framing
merger or forced perspective