PHOTOGRAPHY BASICS: APERTURE
A lot of people have been adversely affected this year due to COVID-19, the people who’re stuck at home can utilize their time by learning new skill-sets, this article is for all the people who are fond of photography and the beginner photographers who are facing trouble in clicking the desired photos.
The three pillars of basic photography are:
· SHUTTER SPEED
· ISO
· APERTURE
Aperture is certainly the most important among the basic pillars of photography.
WHAT IS APERTURE?
Aperture can be defined as the opening in the lens through which light passes to enter the camera.
You can shrink or enlarge the size of the aperture to allow more or less light to reach your camera sensor similar to the pupil of the human eye.
Aperture can be used to add dimension to your photos by controlling depth of field, which can give you a blurred background with a beautiful shallow focus effect or sharp photos from the nearby foreground to the distant horizon.
HOW APERTURE AFFECTS EXPOSURE?
One of the most important affects is the brightness/exposure, of your images.
HOW APERTURE AFFECTS DEPTH OF FIELD?
Depth of field is the amount of your photograph that appears sharp from front to back.
Some images have a “thin” or “shallow” depth of field, where the background is completely out of focus.
here, the background is “blur” or “shallow” as the focus is completely on the butterfly.
Meanwhile other images have a “large” or “deep” depth of field, where both the foreground and background are sharp.
here, the background is as “clear” and “sharp” as the subject.
UNDERSTANDING F/STOP AND THE SIZE OF APERTURE.
Aperture is usually expressed as a number known as “f/stop” e.g. f/2, f/4.5, f/8. Generally f/stops are a way of describing the size of the aperture for a particular photo.
One important part of aperture that confuses beginning photographers more than anything else is that small numbers represent larger, whereas large numbers represent smaller apertures.
USING THE RIGHT APERTURE
In order to pick the right aperture for your desired photograph, you need recall the two most important effects of aperture i.e. “EXPOSURE” and “DEPTH OF FIELD” and how they’re affecting the image.
here f/1.8 is used for bokeh effect, often desired for portraits.
For darker environment, large apertures like f/2.8 are preferred as to capture a photo of proper brightness, meanwhile there’s no such specific preference for brighter environments but stepping down beyond f/8 aperture might start making your photos less sharp due to the effect of lens diffraction.
here, the aperture f/10 is used to capture a sharp image, the background is as sharp as the subject.
EFFECTS OF APERTURE ON YOUR PHOTOS
· The brightness/exposure of your photos
· Depth of field
· Sharpness loss due to diffraction
· Sharpness loss due to lens quality
· The quality of background highlights (bokeh effect)
· Focus shift on some lenses
· Ability to focus in low light (under some conditions)
· Control amount of light from flash
While these are the only basic things that you need to know about aperture, the “perfect” shot is something which you’ll achieve with a zest of practice. Photography is a never-ending learning process where your experiments make your work better.
Many of you might not be able to visit a lot of places right now due to lock-down but you can still try many other shots in your home, backyards and other accessible places to explore the ability of your camera, as a photographer can seek inspiration from anything. I hope by the time this pandemic is over you’ll have many tricks up your pocket for your trips.
STAY HAPPY, SAFE AND KEEP LEARNING!
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