breathing

If you've watched PetaPixel's YouTube reviews or read our written reviews, you might have heard or seen some strange terms. LoCA? Bokeh? Ghosting? Breathing? Field curvature? What do they mean?

You've heard the terms "varifocal" and "parfocal" to describe lenses, but do you know what these terms mean? Or why they matter? If you don't, this informative conversation between Vistek video producer Dale Sood and product manager Brian Young is the perfect place to start.

Here's a term that most of you have probably experienced before, but some of you may never have heard before. It's called "focus breathing" (or simply "breathing"), and it refers to the shift in angle of view that often occurs when you focus a lens. If you've ever carefully composed a shot, refocused, and then discovered that your composition changed, you've been a victim of focus breathing.

Want to see how our planet "breathes"? Data visualization guru and cartographer John Nelson recently downloaded twelve cloud-free satellite photograph mosaics of Earth showing what our planet looks like in each month of the year. He then combined them into animated GIFs that show the steady pulse of seasons.

Do you ever clean the front element of your lens by fogging it up with your breath and then wiping it off with a cloth? If so, you might want to stop -- Nikon says the practice could be damaging to your glass. Apparently human breath contains stuff that isn't too friendly toward camera lenses.