Photography glossary - B

B&W Black and white.

(Bulb) - letter on the shutter dial indicating that the shutter will stay open while the release is depressed.

Back focus - distance between the back surface of the lens and the image plane, when the lens is focused at infinity. Background - area shown behind the main subject in a picture. black and white pipeline

Background density - density of any selection of a negative or print on which there is no image. Also referred to as Fog level. Backing - dark coating, normally on the back of a film, but sometimes between emulsion and base, to reduce halation. The backing dye disappears during processing.

Back-lighting - (Back Lit) light coming from behind the subject.

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. Back projection - projection system often used to create location backgrounds in the studio.

back up - A copy of an original file

To back up - To create a copy of a file

Bag bellows - short flexible sleeve used on large format cameras in place of normal bellows when short focal length lenses are employed.

Balance - placement of colors, light and dark masses, or large and small objects in a picture to create harmony and equilibrium. Ball and socket- swiveling mount used to attach a camera to a tripod, consisting of a large ball joint designed to move in a cup. Ballistic photography - photography of weapons, ammunition and projectiles usually used for analysis.

Banding- An artifact of color gradation where graduated colors are reduced to larger blocks of a single color.

Barium sulfate - compound used in the manufacture of photographic printing paper to give bright white highlights in the final print. Barn doors - accessory used on spotlights and flood lamps to control the direction of light and width of the beam. Barrel distortion - one of the common lens aberrations, where straight lines at the edge of the field are caused to bend , giving the image a barrel-like appearance.

Baryta - coating of barium sulfate applied as the foundation to fiber based printing papers.

Base - support for photographic emulsions. Available in a choice of materials, including paper, cellulose, triacetate, glass and estar.

Baseboard camera - portable large format camera with a folding base-board. Allows a limited use of camera movements. Also referred to as a field camera.

Base Exposure Time - initial exposure time used for making a "straight" print.

Base-relief - photographic image effect usually produced by printing from a negative and a positive sandwiched together in the enlarger, slightly out of register.

Batch numbers - set of numbers printed on packages of sensitive materials to indicate common production coating.

Baud - A unit of measurement for data transmission rates, named after the French engineer, Baudot.

Beam splitter - mirror and prism system capable of partly reflecting, partly transmitting light.

Belitski''''s reducer - solution used as a chemical reducer for negatives. It consists of ferric potassium citrate or oxalate in an acid fixing solution.

Bellows - light tight, folding sleeve which can be fitted between the lens and the film plane.

Bellows shutter - obsolete shutter consisting of a pair of bellows that, when closed together, form a hemisphere enclosing the lens.

Between the lens shutter - shutter usually placed within the components of a compound lens close to the diaphragm.

Bitmap - A method of storing information that maps an image pixel bit by bit.

Bit-depth The color or gray scale of an individual pixel. A pixel with 8 bits per color gives a 24 bit image. (8 Bits x 3 colors is 24 bits.) 24 bit color resolution is 16.7 million colors.

Bit - Binary digit. The smallest digital unit that can show only two states 0 or 1. 8 bits produce one byte.

Bios - Stands for Basic Input / Output System and describes the basic program of a computer.

Binary - This is the name given to the representation system of numbers consisting solely of the figures 0 and 1. Just like the tenfigure decimal system (0-9), in the binary system, larger numbers are made up by combining the numbers 0 and 1.

Bichromate - refers to potassium bichromate or potassium dichromate, used for bleaching and as a sensitizer for gelatin.

Bi-concave lens - simple lens or lens shape within a compound lens, whose surfaces curve toward the optical center. Such a lens causes light rays to diverge.

Bi-convex lens - simple lens shape whose surfaces curve outward, away from the optical center. Such a lens causes light rays to converge.

Binocular vision - visual ability to determine three dimensions. Stereoscopic photography depends on the use of binocular vision.

Bi-pack - combination of two films, differently sensitized, but exposed as one.

Bi-refringence - splitting of light passing through certain kinds of crystals into two rays at polarized right angles to each other.

Bispheric lens - lens having different curvatures at the center and the edge, each of which forms part of a sphere. The different edge curvature brings the peripheral rays more closely to the same point of focus as the center rays.

Bitumen - hydro-carbon which hardens by the action of light. It was used by Joseph Nicephore Niepce to produce the worlds first photograph in the early 19th century.

Black silver - finely divided metallic silver formed from silver halides by exposure and development.

Bleach - chemical bath capable of rehalogenizing black metallic silver.

Bleaching - stage in most toning, reducing and color processing systems.

Bleach-out - method of producing line drawings from photographic images. The photographic is processed in the normal way, its outlines sketched, and the black metallic silver image is then bleached away to leave a drawn outline.

Bleed - term used to describe a picture with no borders, which has been printed to the edge of the paper.

Blocked up - a portion of an overexposed and/or overdeveloped negative so dense with silver halides that texture and detail in the subject are unclear.

Blocking out - method of painting selected areas of a negative with an opaque liquid on the non-emulsion side. Since light is unable to penetrate these areas they appear white on the final print.

Blotter - sheet or sheets of absorbent material made expressly for photographic prints. Wet prints dry flat and quickly when placed between blotters.

Blowup - enlargement; a print that is made larger than the negative or slide.

Blue print - alternative term for cyanotype.

Blue sensitive - sensitive to blue light only. All silver halides used in traditional black and white emulsions are sensitive to blue light, but early photographic materials had only this sensitivity.

Blur - unsharp image areas, created or caused by subject or camera movement, or by selective or inaccurate focusing.

Blurb - Writen short material on a magazine''''s cover describing its content Bluebox - A process known from television and movie productions. Actors stand in front of a coloured wall, usually painted blue. Later, a different background is put in for the blue areas on the recorded image, giving the impression that the actors are e.g. on top of a mountain, although they never left the studio.

Blooming - The opposite of noise; an image error that has been more or less eradicated in the newer digital cameras. It describes the "overflow" of electrical charges between the individual sensors on a CCD element which can cause distortions of the subject and/or color. . BMP An uncompressed bitmapped file format (BMP) used with Microsoft Windows.

Boom - adjustable metal arm, attached to a firm stand, on which lighting can be mounted. Some booms are also made to support cameras.

Borax - mild alkali used in fine grain developing solutions to speed up the action of the solution.

Border - edge of a photographic print - either left white, or printed black.

Boric acid - compound used in certain fixers to prolong shier hardening life.

Bounce light - light that is directed away from the subject toward a reflective surface.

Box camera - simplest type of camera manufactured, and first introduced by George Eastman in 1888. It consists of a simple, single element lens, a light tight box and a place for film in the back.

bps - Bits per second. Refers to the number of bits transferred in one second. The bps notation is often found on modems and serial interfaces.

Bracketing - technique of shooting a number of pictures of the same subject and viewpoint at different levels of exposure.

Brightfield - method of illumination used in photomicrography which will show a specimen against a white or light background.

Brightline viewfinder - viewfinder in which the subject is outlined by a bright frame, apparently suspended in space. This may show parallax correction marks, or lines indicating the fields of view of different focal lengths.

Brightness range - subjective term describing the difference in illumination between the darkest and lightest areas of the subject.

Brightness The value of a pixel in an electronic image, representing its lightness value from black to white. Usually defined as brightness levels ranging in value from 0 (black) to 255 (white). Brilliance - intensity of light reflected from a surface. It is sometimes an alternative term for luminosity.

Broad lighting - portrait lighting in which the main light source illuminates the side of the face closes to the camera.

Brometching - obsolete, special method of producing a bromide print. The result acquired the texture of its support and appeared similar to an etching.

Bromide paper - most common type of photographic printing paper. It is coated with an emulsion of silver bromide to reproduce

Bromoil process- old printing process invented in 1907, consisting of three stages. First, an enlargement is made on bromide paper and processed. Second, the silver image is removed in a bleacher which also modifies the gelatin so it will accept lithographic ink. Third, while still damp the gelatin is inked up by hand to create the image.

Browser - Describes a program used to display information, especially on the internet.

Brownie - trade name given to early Kodak box cameras.

Brush development - method of development in which developer is applied to the material with a brush or similar instrument.

BSI - abbreviation for British Standards Institute.

Bubble chamber photography - method of analyzing the paths of high-speed sub-atomic particles.

Buffer - chemical substance used to maintain the alkalinity of a developing solution, particularly in the presence of bromine which is produced during development.

Buffer A temporary storage area usually held in RAM and used as a temporary holding area for data.

Bug - Describes a programming error. This can be removed by correction or rewriting the program codes.

Built-in meter - reflective light meter built directly into the camera so that exposures can be easily made for the cameras position. Bug-Fix - Removing a software error by meansof a mall additional program.

Bulb - .

Bulk film - film purchased in long lengths. Used in a bulk camera back or with a bulk film loader. Photographer would in total darkness cut the desired length of film and roll on to a roll, thus saving money.

Burning in Selectively darkening part of a photo with an image editing program.

Burst Mode The ability to rapidly capture images as long as the shutter button is held down.

Butterfly lighting - lighting in which the main source of light is placed high and directly in front of the subject.

Buy out. Work for hire where client buys out the copyright.

Byte - Binary data packet made up of 8 bits. A byte can represent values between 0 and 255. It can depict 256 symbols, numbers or colours. In the computer field, larger byte size is described using the prefix letter for the abbreviation of the exponent of 2. Therefore: 1 Kilobyte = 1 KB = 1,024 bytes 1 Megabyte = 1 MB = 1,048,576 bytes 1 Gigabyte = 1 GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes 1 Terabyte = 1 TB = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes. read more in raw pipeline by Ted dillard