What is aperture in your camera? - Understanding and utilizing control of your aperture is a great way that you can start getting creative results with your images and start taking images that you love.
An aperture is just an opening in your lens that allows light to come in through the lens and go into your camera. This opening is made up of a diaphragm that opens and closes to adjust the opening in your lens. So that's the simple explanation of the aperture.
The main thing that you need to understand is that the aperture affects the depth of field of your image. The larger the opening of the aperture, the more shallow the depth of field of the image is.
And, the smaller the opening of the aperture, the greater the depth of field is.
How Do We Measure The Aperture?
Aperture is measure in f-stops. And there is one thing about this f-stops that you must understand; that the smaller the number, the larger the opening of the diaphragm inside your lens.For example, an F/1.4 is a really large opening inside your lens which gives you a very shallow depth of field.
Another thing that the aperture affects is the amount of light that comes into your camera. The smaller the opening in your lens, the less light is going to come in. So, whenever you adjust the aperture, you need to compensate with the shutter speed or the ISO to balance the exposure of your images.
What Is Depth Of Field In Photography?
One of the most important aspects of photography that any photographer learns at very beginning is what's called depth of field. Depth of field is the range of focus area in your frame. So, any object that is inside the range of focus area will look sharp. And any object that is outside of this range will be blurred.Depth of field is affected by three very important factors.
- The first factor is aperture that I described earlier.
- The second factor is your distance to the person or thing that you're shooting. The closer your camera to the subject, the more shallow depth of field you will have in the image. The distance of your subject from the background will also affect how much the bokeh you'll get in the background.
- The third factor is the focal length of your lens. The longer the focal length that you use to take picture, the more shallow the depth of field. You can get some amazingly shallow depth of field when shooting at 200mm.
Additionally, if you have more than one camera and each camera you own has a different sensor sizes; you will realize that the bigger the size of the camera sensor, the more shallow depth of field you get (if three other factors remain the same).
OK, that's the simple explanation of aperture in your camera. Hopefully, it can help you to start taking great photos and develop your photographic skills.
