Take Your Camera Off Auto: Part 3 - Aperture (A.K.A The Hardest Thing For Me When I Was Starting Out)

I was convinced that I'd NEVER get this. It was just too confusing.

Today, we get to the third part of the exposure triangle - apertures. Your aperture is essentially controlling how much light gets to your sensor. Yes, the shutter speed does that a little bit too, but shutter speed is more about getting sharp, in focus pictures and aperture is more about light.

The aperture is commonly referred to as the "f stop". I don't actually know why that is. That's something that was not explained to me as I was learning. Your f-stop is how big of a hole you have in your lens. Don't worry, it's a good hole that's supposed to be there :)

Here's the confusing part: the SMALLER the number (3.5, 2.0, 1.8, etc.) the BIGGER the opening. If you have a small number f-stop, you have a very wide open aperture. You're letting in a lot of light. The flip side, obviously, is that if you have a BIG number (14, 16, 22) you have a SMALL aperture. You are letting in much less light and have a very small opening.

It's confusing. I know. I had to learn it and hear it many different ways until one day it just clicked. Suddenly I just knew it.

But aperture does more than just control light. Have you seen the photos by professional photographers where the background is a gorgeous blur? The subject just pops off the background. That effect is controlled by aperture. It's called "depth of field". In a sentence, depth of field is how much of your photo is in focus.

If you have an aperture of 2.0 (small number, big hole, lots of light), you will have not much in focus beyond your subject. Your depth of field will be SHALLOW. If you have an aperture of 12 or 14 (big number, small hole, less light), your depth of field will be deep. Lots of your background will be in focus.

Here are two examples from my days learning this:

The image on the left, you can see that the lights on the Christmas tree especially are nice and blurry. My little polar bear stands out from the background nicely. On the right, everything is in focus. The stuffed animal doesn't have much definition from the background. The left photo had an aperture of 4.5 and the right photo was at f/25!!

Maybe you don't have a camera that allows you to manipulate settings or maybe you just want to play a bit. There is a wonderful site that lets you play with all the aspects of the exposure triangle and gives you feedback on what you did. You set up the settings how you want and the "take" a photo. It then has notes on each of the settings and what it means for how your photo turned out. Happy playing!

http://www.canonoutsideofauto.ca/play/

This is a lot of information and it can be very confusing. I hope I kept things simple and straightforward. Leave any questions in the comments and I'll try to answer them or go find the answers!