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THE BASICS
Lighting Technical Terms
Before I jump into talking about lighting, I want to share a couple technical terms with you that come up
quite a lot:
• Joule or watt-second: A joule is a unit of energy or a measured amount of heat being expended. In
photography, it’s how lm, or a digital camera sensor, reacts to the radiation in light. Exposures are
measured by the temperature of the light. Like a joule, a watt-second is a derived unit of measured
energy, but it’s used to differentiate and measure a strobe’s lighting output.
• Guide number: This term relates to the output or power of a ash unit mounted on a camera (not an
external strobe). ...