Please help

[SLR Face]

Could someone please explain to me, what is ISO, white ballance, Aperture, Firewire (IEEE 1394) and what is this differnence between CCD and CMOS?

Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks

[RichNY]

ISO- Film or a digital sensor's sensitivity to light. ISO is a value/setting on digital cameras that starts at 100 and usually goes up to 1600. Increasing ISO allows you to take pictures in lower light with smaller aperatures or faster shutter speed. The downside of increasing ISO is that your pictures start developing more 'noise' (grain like look) with ISOs 800 and 1600. (Less so with Canons, more so with Nikons)

Aperature- When you take a picture your lens 'opens' to a certain size to allow light to pass thru the reach the film or sensor for a certain period of time. Aperature refers to how big the openning is. Aperature is measured in f-stops using a scale that seems backwards. A 2.8 f stop (f/2.8) is bigger than a 5.6 f stop (f/5.6). Lenses that can open larger (smaller f stops are called fast because they can allow you to take a properly exposed picture with a shorter shutter speed)

White Balance- Your camera needs to understand what 'white' looks like otherwise your pictures of things like snow may come out looking grey. White balance is a control on digital cameras that allows you to specify the type of lighting in a scene (cloudy, tungsten, sunlight, etc.) to help the camera understand how to expose your pictures.

Firewire- This is a computer standard for a high speed interface between a computer and peripherals similar to another standard you might be familiar with, USB. Today, many hard disks and memory card readers are attached to computers by Firewire ports for fast communication between these devices.

*For a good explanation of Aperature, ISO, Shutterspeed, and White Balance purchase the book Understanding Exposure by Brian Peterson. It does a great job of not only explaining what these terms are, but why you want to choose one set of settings v. another to get the desired results for your images. (ex. Do you want everything in a picture to be clear or just the subject with the background blurred out)