Photography is about light, without light, an image could never be captured. There are three kings when it comes to controlling light in photography and aperture is one of them.
Using aperture can help improve a shot by either blurring the background or bringing every element into focus.
What is aperture? Simply put, it is the hole through which light passes in a lens. If we compare photography to the human eye, you can think of aperture this way: the lens is the cornea and aperture is the pupil.
When you walk into a dark room, the pupil will expand to allow more light in to better see your surroundings and shrink when the lights are turned on. This translates to photography. The bigger the aperture hole, the more light is allowed through.
How to control Aperture:
Controlling aperture can be a bit confusing when a photographer is first starting out. Aperture is measured in f-numbers, or commonly called, f-stops.
These f-numbers can be adjusted to better fit your needs. Ranging from low numbers to high, this is where confusion can set in.
The lower the f-number, the larger the aperture and vice versa. In other words, a lower f-number means a larger opening. Remember to think in opposites, low f-stop, large aperture and more light, high f-stop, small aperture and less light.
Once you have this memorized, it will be easier to apply to your photography.
Depth of Field.
To make it a little more complicated, there is another term used when referring to aperture. This is Depth of Field, which is the amount of the photograph that will be in focus. Adjusting aperture directly results in either a small or large Depth of Field.
Thankfully, the Depth of Field size better correlates to the f-number. This means that a small Depth of Field has a low f-stop and a large Depth of Field has a high f-stop.
Photographers are always thinking about Depth of Field, even if they are not thinking of the term itself. Whether doing landscapes or portraits, a photographer has to decide how much of the image they want to be in focus.
When it comes to portraits, a photographer may wish to blur all the background noise and focus entirely on the main subject. On the other hand, landscape photographers will want the entire scene to be in focus, making for a crisp and detailed photograph.
Here is the breakdown again:
- Low f-stop number, larger aperture opening, more light, small depth of field.
- High f-stop number, smaller aperture opening, less light, large depth of field.
How To Use Aperture: A Photography Exercise.
To help you better understand aperture, the trick is to play around with it yourself.
- Take an object and place it on a table. Aperture can be adjusted in either Manual or Aperture Priority mode. As a beginner, it is best to use Aperture Priority mode as you don’t have to worry about controlling anything else other than aperture.
- Change the f-stop to the lowest possible number (each lens has a maximum f-stop) and take a shot of the object.
- Increase the f-stop and take another photo. Do this until you have reached the highest f-number.
- By scrolling through your images, you will see a difference in every shot as the aperture was decreased (f-stop increased). Knowing what an image will look like with either a small or larger aperture, you can now apply this to every photograph you take.
Remember, aperture has everything to do with the lens, not the camera body. Therefore, when buying equipment, remember to take notice of the maximum f-number a lens can apply. If you desire to do portrait photography, you will want a lens with a very low maximum.