Photography 101: All About Aperture

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Photography 101: All About Aperture

Saturday, March 13th, 2010 Subscribe To Our Feed

Aperture and other technical photography basics can induce yawns in the most eager of budding shutterbugs, but once these basics are understood, the rest of photography easily comes into focus. Aperture, shutter speed and ISO are all terms good to know, whether you have a point-and-shoot or professional camera. This article explains aperture and provides tips for using it to create better photographs so you’ll be proud to display them in a wall picture frame.

To better understand aperture, think about how the irises of your eyes get bigger and smaller to allow more or less light into the pupil. Like your irises, the camera’s lens diaphragm narrows and widens to let in less or more light. Thus the aperture determines the exposure of the picture, that is how bright or dark it is. The aperture also has another important purpose which we’ll look at in a second.

“Aperture” refers to the size of this opening and is measured in F stops. The smaller the F Stop number, the wider the aperture. This is where it’s easy to get confused. Actually the F stop numbers are ratios, which is why the bigger the F Stop number, the smaller the size of the aperture.

Besides controlling light, aperture controls depth of field. To better understand this concept, make a fist and hold it in front of your eye. Now slowly open your hand. See how the focus changes? Sure you can see more through the bigger opening, but when the opening in your fist is small everything is in focus? Try it again, and notice how when you open your fist, the object closest to you will come into sharp focus while objects farther away will be out of focus. This is how aperture determines depth of field, that is how much of a photograph is focused.

If you are shooting in Auto Focus (AF), the camera will attempt to focus on what it perceives to be the main subject of the photograph, but the results may not be what you want.

For this reason, many cameras have an Aperture Priority setting to help eliminate this problem. This allows you to set the aperture and then it automatically adjusts the shutter speed to compensate for the larger or smaller aperture. For example, if you set the aperture for a landscape, it narrows it and therefore lets in less light. The camera would automatically lengthen the time the shutter stays open so that your photo isn’t underexposed (too dark). Aperture Priority isn’t perfect, but generally this how it works.

Now if you have an SLR and are shooting in manual mode, you can adjust the aperture and shutter speeds separately.

Most will have a camera with preset modes such as landscape, sports or portrait. When the mode is set for landscape, the aperture automatically narrows so everything will be brought into focus. At the same time, the shutter speed automatically slows, thus leaving the shutter open longer to compensate for the lessened amount of light streaming through the diaphragm.

When you switch to portrait mode and focus on a person in front of you with the landscape in the background, the camera will bring your subject into focus, making the person stand out more than the landscape. And it will speed up the shutter speed so the picture isn’t overexposed by the additional light allowed in with the larger aperture.

Remember: the smaller the aperture, the greater the F stop number (because it represents a ratio not a whole number) and the greater the depth of field.

Understanding photo basics like aperture is super important for using manual settings or aperture priority but also helps those using preset modes as well. Here are three preset modes you should better understand:

Portrait: How much the background blurs when using this mode depends on your camera and the distance between your subject and background – a minimum of 10 feet works best. This mode can be used for any subject you want to bring into focus while taking the background out of focus.
Landscape:(called “Infinity” on some cameras): This is the mode depicted by the mountain peak or figure 8. You can use this for any picture where you want everything in focus like landscapes, cityscapes or a picture of your garden. And for shots of breathtaking vistas, try framing them in a panoramic picture frame to make your images really stand out.
Macro: This mode, often depicted by a tulip opens the camera’s aperture extra wide so you can take super close ups. Depending on your camera, you’ll be able to get anywhere within an inch to a foot of your subject. When preparing to take photos outdoors of items like flowers, remember that even the smallest petal movement can cause the image to be blurry because of the slower shutter speed. Also remember to focus on the subject that you want in focus, whether it be a caterpillar’s eyes or a butterfly’s wings.

Just applying this knowledge can help you produce some beautiful photographs that you’ll be proud to display in a gallery picture frame on the wall.

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