Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 549, Using a Camera.
This is English as a Second Language podcast, episode 549.
If you like listening to these podcasts, consider supporting us by going to our website eslpodcom and becoming a Learning Guide member.
Your Learning Guide.
Membership will give you an 8-10 page guide for all of our current episodes.
That will help you improve your English even faster.
This episode is called Using a Camera.
It's a dialogue between Ingrid and Deng using vocabulary common to discussions related to cameras.
Let's get started.
I don't mind lending you my camera for the trip, but first let me show you how to use it.
No need to do that.
I took a photography class in high school and I pretty much know all there is to know about taking pictures.
Wasn't that a long time ago?
This is a digital camera with some new features.
For instance, this camera has auto-zoom, image stabilization, and a memory card.
It can't be that different from the camera I used 15 years ago.
This looks like a point-and-shoot camera.
You look through the viewer and push the button, right?
Well, not quite.
You can adjust the flash and shutter speed, see?
You can also attach a lens for wide-angle or close-up shots.
You can even review your photos, saving the ones you like or deleting the ones you don't want anymore.
Okay, I got it.
By the way you're talking, you'd think I was born yesterday.
Just show me where to load the film.
Ingrid says to Dang, I don't mind lending you my camera for your trip, but first let me show you how to use it.
A camera, as you probably know, is a device that you use to take photographs.
Ingrid is going to lend, let Deng use her camera for his trip.
Deng says, no need to do that, meaning you don't need to show me how to use it.
I took a photography class in high school and And I pretty much know all there is to know about taking pictures.
Photography is, I guess we could call it the art and science of taking good photographs, good pictures.
Dang says he's an expert.
He says I pretty much meaning I almost know all there is to know, everything about taking pictures.
Pictures is just another word we use for photographs.
Ingrid says, wasn't that a long time ago?
This is a digital camera with some new features.
Up until recently when, for example, I was growing up, cameras had film, which is pieces of plastic basically, that have special chemicals on them.
When you expose those chemicals to light and then later put them in other chemicals.
You ended up with a photograph.
Nowadays, many cameras are digital, so there is no film.
Everything is stored electronically on a small memory stick or memory chip that is inside the camera or connected to the camera.
Ingrid says for instance for example, this camera has auto-zoom image stabilization and and a memory card.
Auto is short for automatic, something that happens without you needing to do anything.
Zoom Z-O-O-M, when we're talking about a camera, is the ability to change the view so that something that is far away seems very close.
Auto zoom would be the ability for the camera to automatically detect or automatically know how far something is and zoom in on it so you could get a better, closer picture of it.
Image stabilization is a feature on some cameras that allows the camera to keep the image what you are taking a picture of in focus, meaning very clear, even though your hand is moving.
Memory cards are small, usually square or rectangular pieces of electronic equipment that are used to store data.
It's like a DVD or a CD can be used to store movies and photographs and other documents.
Memory cards in a camera are used to store or used to keep the digital images, the photographs.
If you want to take even more photographs, you can put in a different memory card with more memory.
Deng says, This looks like a point-and-shoot photo.
The phrase point and shoot means that it's a very simple camera where you just hold up the camera, put it in the direction of the thing you want to take a photograph of and push or press a button.
That then takes the photograph.
There's no adjustments that you have to make before you take the photo.
It's a very simple kind of camera for dumb people like me who don't know how to use cameras very well.
But I did take a photography class in high school.
Deng says, you look through the viewer and push the button, right?
The viewer is the small rectangular opening in the back of the camera that you look through to see what you are going to take a picture of, to see the image that you are going to take the photograph of.
That's a viewer.
Viewer has a couple of other meanings, however, so take a look at the learning guide for those.
Ingrid says, well, not quite.
You can adjust the flash and shutter speed.
See?
She's showing him.
The flash is the bright light that lasts for a very short period of time, that gives you more light so that you can see what is in front of you.
It will appear better on the photograph.
That's a flash.
Shutter speed is the amount of time that the small window inside of the camera is open.
A slow shutter speed means that you need more light.
A fast shutter speed means you need less light.
So if you're out in the sun and it's very bright out, you would not need a slow shutter speed.
Shutter is just the name of the little window that opens and closes rapidly.
That exposes the film in an old camera.
The electronic sensing equipment inside the camera.
What the camera uses to convert that light into a digital image.
Ingrid says, you can also attach a lens for wide angle or close-up shots.
Wide angle means that it is a lens, something you put on the front of the camera that creates photographs with a wider than normal view.
A close-up is when you want to be very close or near to something, when there is very little distance between the camera and what you are taking a picture of.
You could take a close-up of someone's face, for example.
Ingrid says you can even review your photos, look at your photos after you've taken them, saving the ones you like or deleting the ones you don't want anymore.
So the camera has sort of a little computer that allows you to see the photographs on the back and delete the ones you don't want.
Deng says, okay, I got it, meaning I understand.
By the way you're talking, you'd think I was born yesterday.
By the way you're talking means the way that you are talking to me indicates that you think I was born yesterday.
The expression born yesterday means that someone is inexperienced, someone who is naive, someone who is easily tricked or lied to.
You may say, of course I know how to use a fax machine.
I wasn't born yesterday.
Someone who would be born yesterday would, of course, be a very small baby who wouldn't know anything.
But you have experience, you do know something, and therefore you weren't born yesterday.
Deng says, Just show me where to load the film.
To load means to put something into something else, especially when it is needed to make it work.
So if you have a copier, a copying machine, you need to load paper into it.
You need to put paper into the machine so that you can make your copies.
Film, we already mentioned, is a long, thin piece of plastic used in older cameras to record the image, to capture the image, the light that comes in.
The question indicates, of course, that Deng doesn't really know what he's talking about, since digital cameras don't have film.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
I don't mind lending you my camera for the trip, but first, let me show you how to use it.
No need to do that.
I took a photography class in high school and I pretty much know all there is to know about taking pictures.
Wasn't that a long time ago?
This is a digital camera with some new features.
For instance, this camera has auto-zoom, image stabilization, and a memory card.
It can't be that different from the camera I used 15 years ago.
This looks like a point-and-shoot.
You look through the viewer and push the button, right?
Well, not quite.
You can adjust the flash and shutter speed.
See?
You can also attach a lens for wide-angle or close-up shots.
You can even review your photos, saving the ones you like or deleting the ones you don't want anymore.
Okay, I got it.
By the way you're talking, you think I was born yesterday.
Just show me where to load the film.
Our scriptwriter is young, but she wasn't born yesterday.
That would be Dr. Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us next time on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2010 by the Center for Educational Development.
