Welcome Back

I realized that I had been writing this Photography-based BLOG, and I had not written anything about being a photographer, or sharing my knowledge and skill sets to those wanting to get into photography. I intend to correct that with posts now to inform, instruct and explain how to improve yourself as a beginner to photographer, whether its basic concepts, learning how to use your camera or helpful techniques when taking the shot. Last week, I talked about the first aspect of the Exposure Triangle: ISO; This week, I'll talk a bit about the next aspect: Aperture.

Aperture

This part of the Triangle is a little bit easier to understand, but it is also tricky at the same time. Aperture by definition, is how open the lens is when you take a shot. Why is this important? Well, depending on what you set this to, your Aperture determines how much light you allow to come in to your camera onto the film or the sensor, depending on your camera model.

To explain what I mean, Let me explain what goes into determining aperture. Every lens on a camera has a series of blades that open and close based on the aperture setting. The number varies based on the lens, which determines the shape of the bokeh it creates. We'll discuss Bokeh in a future post, but these blades basically open or tighten based on your aperture setting, which allows the light to pass through the lens and into the camera, whether its film or digital.

Depth of Field

Now the side effect of aperture is a varying depth of field. Depth of Field is basically a level of how much of your photo is in focus. Now for me, this one was tricky, because I don't adjust my aperture all that often, I usually leave it completely open, which varies from f-1.8 to f-2.8. Let me explain what I mean, when I say 'completely open,' I have my aperture at the lowest number the lens can go, which brings in the most amount of light, but the trade off is, is that I have an extremely shallow depth of field. Basically, only a little bit in front or behind my subject is out of focus, depending on who you are, can be considered risky, because if you can't tell if you got your subject, you find out later you got it completely out of focus. I've noticed that every photographer is different when it comes to depth of field, some like a nice crisp shot all the way through, and others want only a strong focal separation from the subject.

Coming back to Aperture, the easiest way to explain how to use this, is look at the triangle, the Aperture is indicated in Focal Stops, or F-Stops. The lower the number, typically f-2.8 or f-1.8, means that the lens is more open, which brings in the most light, and has the shallowest depth of field. On the other end of the spectrum, the larger the number, typically maxing out at f-22, allows the least amount of light into the camera, but also has the largest depth of field. Usually at f-22, you are taking landscape photos with elements close to you, as well as in the background, while keeping them all in focus.