12 Weeks to Better Photography- Week One

 

Week One: Learning about Aperture (aka F/stop)

In my humble opinion, learning about aperture is one of the most important parts of photography. Likewise, the main reason that we ended up investing in a DSLR camera was so that I could have more control of aperture. Essentially, Aperture refers to how open your camera's lens is--but it's confusing, because the lower the f/stop number, the MORE open the lens is. The idea goes like this:

Low F-Stop Number = More open aperture = More Light = Smaller Depth of Focus
High F-Stop Number = Less open aperture = Less Light = Larger Depth of Focus

It took me a long time to really get a grasp of this-- because it isn't intuitive at all to me to have a smaller depth of focus with more light. But then I realized that all I really need to remember is this:

Small f/stop number = smaller amount in focus
Larger f/stop number = larger amount in focus

 Example One-- F 1.8

See how only the bottom few lines are in focus? That's because my f/stop number is small, which means that the depth of field (what's in focus) is also going to be very small. Now, take a look at what happens to the same shot when my aperture number is larger:

Example Two- F 22

Now, even though the point of focus is still the bottom line of the page, the words on the entire page are much more clear, and it's easy to make out notes and words, even if they aren't crystal clear.

See how being able to control aperture can drastically alter the mood of the picture, not to mention where the eye is drawn? This is exactly why I think aperture is such an important part of photography!

**BIG NOTE: How small of an f/stop you'll be able to achieve will depend on your camera lens. Stock lenses don't tend to have super low f/stop numbers. I think my stock lens only went down to F 3 or F 4, which is the main reason that I wanted the Nifty Fifty lens, which goes down to F 1.8.  If your lens doesn't have a low enough f-stop or you have a point and shoot camera that doesn't allow you to change f/stop, I wrote a blog post some time ago about Faking Bokeh Using Photoshop.