Photography Basics — Aperture and Depth of Field
These days photography is a hobby anyone can claim to have. With new advanced cameras on iPhones, anyone can be a photographer, but not many people understand how to really take good pictures. A real photographer takes into account the aperture, ISO, shutter speed, time of day, location, and endless amounts of things just to make sure one picture is perfect. Just slightly changing any of these can change the whole picture. If you are interested in upping your photography game, read on.
Aperture
So, we’ll start with this thing called aperture. In professional cameras, you have your lens and the camera body. In order for your camera to take a picture, the lens has this little hole that lets light in. When you press the button to take a picture this hole opens, allowing the light from your subject to come into the camera and recorded as a picture. This hole can be changed in size to allow different amounts of light in. So, if you’re taking pictures on a bright, sunny day, you’ll want it to be smaller to let less light in. If it’s around sunset and getting dark, you’ll want it to be larger so you can get the most light in possible. Now as you think about this I’ll explain the confusing part. On your camera, the size of the hole is measured in f-stops. For example, you can have an aperture of f/1.4. These numbers can range from f/1.2 all the way to f/30 or higher, but f/30 is way smaller than f/1.2 despite what you would think. A f/1.2 is the largest aperture most lenses will have, which is kind of confusing since it’s a small number, but you get used to it.
Depth of Field
Aperture also controls the depth of field. Depth of field is how much of the picture is in focus. As you change the aperture you also change the composition of your photo. The lower your aperture is, the less of your subject is in focus. As you increase your aperture, the depth of field in your photo increases.
To sum it all up, we can use an example. This picture was taken on a cloudy day, so I brought my aperture down to make my subject brighter. Since I brought the aperture down, everything behind my subject is blurry, allowing my subject to stand out.
Citation
https://www.instagram.com/p/BmU2-lcDVzM/
“What Is Aperture? Understanding F-Stop in Photography.” City Academy, 27 Nov. 2017, www.city-academy.com/news/what-is-aperture-in-photography/.
“Introduction to Aperture in Photography — DPS.” Digital Photography School, Digital Photography School, 16 Mar. 2017, digital-photography-school.com/aperture/.
