Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Japanese and English Camera Terminology Equivalents

Alright, it's been bothering me for a while now, but I can't find any resources online that have Japanese camera terminology. So... while I was down buying my camera bag, I questioned one of the employees until long enough after closing time that they had to reopen to let me out. This list is hardly exhaustive, but it should be a good starting place for anybody having problems with this kind of thing.
If you don't know what the word is, it's probably just the English word, said very slowly. As examples, if you take the first four words, they are pronounced kamera, lenz, frash, and maunto, respectively. Creative, right?

In Kanji (漢字で) Reading (読み方) English meaning (英語で)

カメラ camera

レンズ lens

フラッシュ flash

マウント mount (する verb)
大きくする 【おおきくする】 to zoom in (lit: to make bigger)
広くする 【ひろくする】 to zoom out (lit: to make wider)
レンズを付ける 【つける】 to attach a lens
明るいレンズ 【あかるいレンズ】 fast lens
露出 【ろしゅつ】 exposure (する verb)
露出不足 【ろしゅつぶそく】 underexposure
望遠 【ぼうえん】 telephoto (する verb)
広角 【こうかく】 wide-angle (する verb)
絞り 【しぼり】 aperture
絞る 【しぼる】 to stop down aperture
半押し 【はんおし】 to half-press the shutter button
立て位置 【たていち】 portrait (vertical) orientation
横位置 【よこいち】 landscape (horizontal) orientation

ピンぼけ out of focus, off the point

ぶれ camera shake, picture blur

てぶれ hand shakiness
This is the fourth post in about four hours, so I'm going to call it a night and let you guys catch up.
[Edit: Thanks to thots about stuff for pointing out a typo.
I'm going to print this out and have a couple pros at the school check over it, if they're willing, so hopefully I can get some more feedback and more terms.]
[Another edit: This guy that's accidentally posing at right checked through the list for me and put up my Japanese for almost an hour. Good man.]

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5 Comments:

Blogger thots about stuff said...

Thanks for the list!

Hey, I think your reading on "to zoom out" may have inadvertently been typed in as the same as "to zoom in."

I think perhaps you were going for 広くする reading as ひろくする。
Not being picky...just trying to be helpful. I didn't notice any others but I didn't look carefully at all of them. I just recognized those particular kanji.

Nice list!

8:33 AM GMT+9  
Blogger William said...

You're mostly right. It's not so much that I typed it in that way, as much as I copied and pasted that line to keep the formatting, and forgot to change the reading.

7:14 PM GMT+9  
Blogger thots about stuff said...

Well, that's what I meant that I thought you had done, but I didn't type it correctly, myself. It feels strange to have Japanese starting to become familiar to my brain more. I don't know how to explain it, but sometimes it almost feels like a physical change is going on in my brain through this process.

9:56 PM GMT+9  
Blogger William said...

What shape do you think it'll be when you're done? Maybe like... a banana?

11:04 PM GMT+9  
Blogger thots about stuff said...

Hmmmm. I'll have to think about that. That's a good shape.

I think trapezoidal would look really silly, though, so I'll avoid that.

9:06 AM GMT+9  

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