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What do the T and v stand for?

Picture of Canon mode dial.
Public-domain image from Wikipedia.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ See also photo.stackexchange.com/questions/7477/…, and my answer there. \$\endgroup\$
    – mattdm
    May 22, 2011 at 14:20
  • \$\begingroup\$ There's some argument in the comments/answers to the other question over whether the V is value or variable. \$\endgroup\$
    – mattdm
    May 22, 2011 at 14:51
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    \$\begingroup\$ Also, as a geek, I am tempted to answer the question in the title with "1:1, of course!" \$\endgroup\$
    – mattdm
    May 22, 2011 at 14:53
  • \$\begingroup\$ @mattdm - "1:1" would be better, but the system won't let you submit that short answer... \$\endgroup\$
    – ysap
    May 22, 2011 at 18:01

2 Answers 2

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Tv stands for "Time value". Similarly Av stands for "Aperture value".

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutter_priority

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Not that I don't appreciate your quick helpfulness, @Vikas. :) \$\endgroup\$
    – mattdm
    May 23, 2011 at 18:08
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    \$\begingroup\$ @mattdm +1 just for you buddy \$\endgroup\$
    – rfusca
    May 24, 2011 at 2:20
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    \$\begingroup\$ @rfusca: funny. But I'm serious that it's detrimental to the site to over-upvote trivial answers, because it causes the really great answers to be relatively undervalued as they get buried under quick things like this. \$\endgroup\$
    – mattdm
    May 24, 2011 at 3:15
  • \$\begingroup\$ Additionally, while I believe the answer to be correct, the linked source is actually quite poor, as it's merely an unsourced wikipedia article with nothing to back it. See dougkerr.net/Pumpkin/articles/APEX.pdf for a better one. \$\endgroup\$
    – mattdm
    May 24, 2011 at 3:17
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TV stands for Time Value. This is basically to indicate that you can set the Shutter Speed manually and the aperture will set automatically depending on the other parameters you've set like the exposure and the ISO. This mode is very handy in case of bird photography, sports photography or anything where shutter speed needs to be constant.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ I think time value is just poor translation . Speed value would be more to the point. Ken \$\endgroup\$
    – Ken
    May 12, 2017 at 22:11
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Ken I disagree. "Duration" would be better, as the value (i.e., 1/5 s, 1 s, etc) is in units of time, whereas speed is relative to unit of 1/time (i.e., Hz). \$\endgroup\$
    – scottbb ♦
    May 13, 2017 at 1:33

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