The following is a list of definitions of terms used on this site:
“b” setting: stands for bulb. A time exposure. Does anyone know why they call this “bulb”? [Click here for a multitude of “interesting” answers!]
Catch & release: When you find a great deal on a camera that’s within your collecting interests, yet you don’t purchase it.
Cheap: under five dollars.
Come out: That phrase folks tend to use during picture taking. Like, when my assistant and I are at a client’s house. The client will say, “I hope they come out!” {Immediately on the defensive, I ask “What are you insinuating? Are we that transparent? You can see right through us, can’t you? Oh yeah…you mean the pictures… you hope the pictures come out.”}
Decoration: A mechanically challenged camera.
Doorbell: Adorable. My friend Cindy uses this term. After having had it grate on me for, like, years, it grew on me. The grating scars healed. What grew in its place was a sort of a warm spot. So I asked her if I could use it on this site. Found out it wasn’t her term to coin! It was someone else’s. So, I contacted that someone else. It wasn’t hers either. She said she heard it from a guy named Bob who once designed costumes for Star Trek : The Next Generation. I decided that was far enough removed to claim it as my own.
Exposure: Something people die of.
Equipment mongers: Folks who talk “equipment” and actually read those zoom lens comparison articles.
Fixed focus: synonymous with “focus free”. Generally speaking, this means non-focus. But focus is so overrated anyway.
Focus free: see “fixed focus”.
Focus: A very overrated feature.
Head rush: The feeling you get when you pull that wet reel out of the tank and get that first gleaming glimpse of a discernable image. [Yes! This camera works!] I think I know how William Henry Fox Talbot felt, ‘cept his was paper. (that dizzy dancing way you feel when every fairy tale comes real…)
Headspace: mindset. way of thinking.
Interesting: Not very interesting.
Little Bastard: The Norton Camera.
Loose Blues: (Also pronounced “loos bloos”, or “luze bluze”.) That sinking feeling you get when you open the back of your junk camera and find that the film you just shot is so loosely held on the take up spool…well…Rows and floes of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air and feather canyons everywhere. I’ve looked at clouds that way.
Lord of Darkness: World Wrestling Federation character, The Undertaker
Mechanically Challenged: Busted. Broke. Decoration. Finding this out the hard way (i.e. purchasing the camera, photographing with the camera, and processing the film) builds character.
Photographicaca : Pronounced Fo-to-gra-fi-ka-ka. (with emphasis on the “ka-ka”). Those photo-related figurines, camera tie pins, camera pencil sharpeners, etc.
Point of Focus: A sometimes non-existent feature. Ever elusive. Adds character.
Shelf Queen: You bought it. It’s broke.
Sporty: Small, very few controls.
The Stuff Family: Arty is the patriarch of the stuff family. He’s picture editor of A MAJOR PHOTO magazine and wants you to call him at 555-1212…be sure to ask for Arty Stuff. Sons Heddy, Seymour and daughter Alotta tend to hang around dad a lot more than they should.
Viewfinder: a generally useless hole atop a junk store camera.