One of the joys of photography is exploring the creative and cultural diversity among our thriving community of imaging enthusiasts.
This extends to all manners of vernacular when it comes to equipment and techniques. Much of which I am not–and may never be–cool or ‘pro’ enough to even know or understand. It’s just that cool.
Whenever you need to start a needless debate though, here are a few simple options:
1. ‘Strobes’
+5 instant cool points are available to any of us cool enough to talk about our ‘strobe(s).’
But what is a strobe, specifically? Is it a flash too?
Well yes. However, a strobe strobes on a constant, repeating pattern, such as in the case of lighthouses, emergency beacons, and timing lights for tuning engines.
Does this sound like what we are doing while engaged in photography? Well, perhaps, depending on your style.
But most of us are only very loosely ‘strobing’ our flashes, and certainly in no way that is going to tune an engine. (It may well be enough to cause annoyance to those around us though! 📸 👍 🤣)
2. ‘Macro’
I was poring over my macroscope the other day and cleaning the elements with a macrofibre cloth, and wondered hey, why don’t we call it a macrophone? Because it makes sounds bigger, right?
This must be what we were thinking when we named lenses that are good at imaging small, a.k.a. micro things. And at the price tag for a good macro lens, we might as well do whatever it takes to feel like what we are doing is Big.
3. ‘Diopter’
Just a moment later I was putting my diopter onto my mi/acro lens, when an annoying best friend came around instructing me not to call it a ‘diopter.’
Who does that?
Optics experts, I guess.
Dioptre, they told me, all importantly, is a property of a lens, namely: a unit of measurement with dimension of reciprocal length, equivalent to one reciprocal metre, 1 dpt = 1 m⁻¹ [credit: nerd-pedia], rather than the object itself. And that the most relevant effect for my objective was to reduce minimum working distance according to Xmin_after = Xmin_before /(D*Xmin_before + 1) where D is the ‘diopter number.’
My close-up lens just rolled its eyes, at a distance inverse to its optical power.
I did check this close-up lens calculator though–if just to confirm that my diopter was indeed perfectly awesome for macroing.
Credit due to @tygeronix, who inspired me to think even more deeply on this than one shouldn’t!