Backlighting.

1. Any light coming from behind the subject.

A typical example is a photo of a person taken with the camera facing towards the sun. Backlighting is particularly difficult for automatic exposure systems in cameras to deal with, since the range of light tends to be so extreme and lenses tend to flare.

Backlighting can also be a deliberate technique for dramatic effect (a backlit subject with no lighting from the front becomes a silhouette) or to separate the subject from the background.

cf. automatic exposure (AE), edge lighting, flare.

2. An LCD screen with a lighting system behind it for use at night or under low-light conditions.

Such lighting systems can use LEDs (many digital watches), electroluminescent panels (eg: Indiglo watches and many handheld computers) or fluorescent tubes (eg: camcorder/digital camera LCD screens, laptop computer screens). Backlighting pushbuttons are commonly indicated on cameras by a backlight icon.

cf. automatic exposure (AE), edge lighting, electroluminescent, flare, fluorescent, LCD, LED.

Entry last updated 2002-05-03. Term 101 of 1487.

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