NSL Photography's™ Glossary of Photographic Terms - B

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B (Bulb) Setting
A shutter-speed setting on an adjustable camera that allows for time exposures. When set on B, the shutter will stay open as long as the shutter release button remains depressed. Another similar option is the "T" setting, where it never drains the battery power on automatic camera body.

Background
The part of the scene the appears behind the principal subject of the picture. The sharpness of the background can be influenced by apertures and shuttle set. In the flash mode, bulb setting usually is set for absorbing more ambience light (background information), so the end result of the exposure won't be pitch dark.

Backlighting
Light coming from behind the subject, toward the camera lens, so that the subject stands out vividly against the background. Sometimes produces a silhouette effect. Always use something (a hand, a lens shade to avoid the light falls onto the lens - to avoid lens flares).

Back-Printing
Information printed on the back of a picture by the photofinisher. The system standard requires the printing of frame number, film cassette number and processing date automatically on the back of each Advanced Photo System print; may also include more detailed information, such as customized titles and time and date of picture-taking.

Barrel Distortion
Straight lines are bowed in at the edges of the picture frame re sembling the sides of a barrel; pres ent in small amounts in some wideangle or wideangle-zoom lenses, bu~ uncorrected in fisheye lenses.

Balance
Placement of colors, light and dark masses, or large and small objects in a picture to create harmony and equilibrium. Description applied to colour films to indicate their ability to produce acceptable colour response in various types of lighting. The films normally available are balanced for daylight (550~6000K photo lamps (3400K) or studio lamps (3200K).

Balanced Fill-Flash
A type of TTL auto flash operation which uses the camera's exposure meter to control ambient light exposure settings, integrated with flash exposure control. That is, flash output level is automatically compensated to balance with ambient light, resulting in a better exposure for both subject and background.

Balanced fill-flash operation
A flash photography technique that balances flash illumination with the scene's ambient light. This automatic operation utilizes the some camera's Automatic Balanced Fill Flash System with TTL Multi Sensor and a compatible dedicated TTL Speedlight.

Between-The-Lens Shutter
A shutter whose blades operate between two elements of the lens. Most medium format cameras like the Hasselblad have one family of lens with shuttle and another without. Most lenses in this family have a smaller maximum aperture than the other family. 

Blown Highlights
These are are the bright areas of an image where all detail has been lost, where instead of seeing the fine detail in the bright areas, all you see is a blend of pure white.

Blowup
A photographic enlargement from a film photograph, which is a print that is made larger than the negative, slide.

Bokeh
In photography, bokeh is the aesthetic quality of the blur, in out-of-focus areas of an image, or the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light. Differences in lens aberrations and aperture shape cause some lens designs to blur the image in a way that is pleasing to the eye, while others produce blurring that is unpleasant or distracting — "good" or "bad" bokeh, respectively. Bokeh occurs for parts of the scene that lie outside the depth of field. Photographers sometimes deliberately use a shallow focus technique to create images with prominent out-of-focus regions.

Bounce Lighting
An artificial light used to illuminate the subject for a photograph, bounced off a reflector such as an attachment which fits on the flash to give an effect of natural or available light.

Bracket Flash
Often called handle mount flash. It comprised of one arm of the L-shaped bracket extends under the camera body and uses the camera's tripod socket to mount the camera on the bracket. The vertical arm of the bracket serves as a handle and mounts a flash unit in an accessory shoe often on top of the handle portion, but there are other methods. Flashes mounted on a bracket usually requires a separate electrical cord to make the electrical connection between camera body and flash unit.

Bracketing
Taking a series of photographs of the same subject at different exposures to insure the "correct" exposure; useful when shooting in situations where a normal metering reading is difficult to obtain. It is taking additional pictures of the subject through a range of exposures-both lighter and darker-when unsure of the correct exposure. Some upper end cameras have the ability to do automatic bracketing. Bracketing is an important method for creating an HDR (High Dynamic Range) photograph, by creating individual images exposed for different portions of the photographic composition, to be merged into the HDR image.

Burning-In
A darkroom process that gives additional exposure to part of the image projected on an enlarger easel to make that area of the print darker. This is accomplished after the basic exposure by extending the exposure time to allow additional image-forming light to strike the areas in the print you want to darken while holding back the image-forming light from the rest of the image. Sometimes called printing-in. The same effect of burning-in can be accomplished with software processing of digital images.

Bulb
A shutter-speed setting on an adjustable camera that allows for long exposures under user control. When set on "B", the shutter will stay open as long as the shutter release button remains depressed. The "T", or Time, setting, on the other hand, requires one press to open the shutter and a second press to close it.

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