NSL Photography's™ Glossary of Photographic Terms - N

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ND
Neutral Density. Usually applies on a filter which effectively reduces the amount of light passing to the film or sensor. In some filters, half ND filters can be very effective to lower the contrast, to the sky to achieve more balance effect.

Negative
The developed film that contains a reversed tone image of the original scene.

NiCd or NICAD
Nickel Cadmium. Used as the backbone of most rechargeable batteries until the development of the Lithium Ion and Nickel Metal Hydride batteries. While these rechargeable batteries performed well for many years they suffered from a "memory problem" and a lack of capacity, which was overcome by the invention of the Lithium-Ion (Li-ion) and Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) batteries.

NiMH
Nickel metal hydride. The NiMH battery uses a hydrogen-absorbing alloy for the negative electrode instead of cadmium. As in NiCd cells, the positive electrode is nickel oxyhydroxide (NiOOH). A NiMH cell can have two to three times the capacity of an equivalent size Nickel-cadmium battery. However, compared to the Lithium-Ion battery, the volumetric energy density is lower and self-discharge is higher.

Noise
Noise comes from misinterpreted pixels found in a digital image, usually occurring in longer exposures. It can be seen as misplaced or random bright pixels in the picture, resulting in random colored dots sprinkled around the image, and/or uneven coloration of what should be smoothly-colored areas usually found in the darker areas of the image.

Normal Lens
A lens that makes the image in a photograph appear in perspective similar to that of the original scene (approximately 45°). A normal lens has a shorter focal length and a wider field of view than a telephoto lens, and a longer focal length and narrower field of view than a wide-angle lens. Normal lenses corresponding to that portion of human vision in which we can discern sharp detail.

NTSC
National Television Standards Committee. Standards for video broadcasting and recording in the US and Japan.

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