
A large aperture lets more light in and has a wider depth of field.Īperture changes with focal length, so you will need to adjust it when switching lenses. It affects how much light goes through the lens to hit the camera sensor.Ī small aperture lets less light into the camera but results in a narrower depth of field (area that appears to be sharp). So if you’re photographing outside on an overcast day, try using a wide aperture for better results!Īperture also controls depth of field which is how much of the scene appears to be sharp from front to back (think about the difference between looking through someone’s eyes versus looking through binoculars).Ī shallow depth of field creates images where only certain parts are in focus while deep depth-of-field maintains sharpness throughout your frame.Īperture is the opening in your lens. The size of this opening can affect how much light enters your camera and affects exposure.Ī wider aperture allows more light to enter than a narrower one, resulting in a brighter image. Shooting with wider open apertures like f/2 or higher can produce shallow depth of field effects by focusing attention on one subject in front of the others while blurring out everything behind.Īperture is the opening in a camera lens that lets light into the camera. The first thing you need to know about aperture is that it’s the size of the hole in your camera. If you have a wide-open lens, like f/2.8, then it means your aperture is wide open and if you have an 80mm lens at f/5.6, that means your aperture is smaller than wide open because there are more blades blocking light going into the camera body.Īs you may have noticed, the aperture of a camera plays an important role in how images are captured.įirst off, the aperture is the opening inside a lens that allows light to pass through to the sensor or film for recording an image.Īperture values can be expressed as f-numbers: f/1, f/2, etc., where “f” stands for focal ratio and “1” refers to its widest open setting (lowest number). The aperture controls how much light enters the camera and, as a result, how much detail can be seen in your photo. The camera aperture is an important piece of the puzzle for any photographer. In this video tutorial, you will learn about aperture with an easy-to-understand analogy followed by a demonstration of what happens when you change your aperture size on your camera.

The size of the aperture changes in relation to focal length, so if you’re using a wide-angle lens, your aperture will be smaller than if you were using a telephoto zoom.Ī wider aperture lets in more light and creates an intense depth of field (the distance between things that are in focus).Ĭonversely, narrower apertures allow less light into the lens and create shallower depths of the field where only objects close to or directly in front of the subject remain sharp.Īperture is the opening of a lens that controls how much light enters your camera.Īperture size can be adjusted to control depth of field, and also affects exposure, focus accuracy, and image sharpness. While we can get the maximum or minimum depth of field by working at each end of the aperture range, sometimes we want a more intermediate level of depth of field, limiting focus to a specific range of distances within the overall photograph. One way to do this is to choose a mid-range f/stop, like f/5.6, and shoot a test frame. In image playback, use the magnifying function of the LCD to zoom in and check the depth of field make adjustments if necessary and reshoot.Understanding how these two factors work together will help you take better photographs with your DSLR camera.Īperture is a setting on your camera that allows you to control how much light enters the lens.

When choosing lenses for landscape photography, we usually want to see as much detail as possible from foreground to background we want to achieve the maximum depth of field by choosing a small aperture (higher f/stop, like f/8 or f/11).

This helps direct the viewer's attention to the subject.

Aperture for Portraitsįor classic portraiture we separate our subject from the surroundings by using "selective focus." Choosing a large aperture (lower f/stop, like f2.8) creates very shallow depth of field with only the subject, or just a portion of the subject, in focus.
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Now that we know how to control depth of field, what determines the choices we make in selecting the aperture? We use focus and depth of field to direct attention to what is important in the photograph, and we use lack of focus to minimize distractions that cannot be eliminated from the composition. While there are no rules, there are some guidelines for selecting Aperture priority.
