Aperture settingsOne of the most important things to understand with taking creative photographs is how to set your aperture and exposure to create the desired effect you want. In your camera’s automatic mode, your aperture and exposure are set automatically. However you have the option in most digital cameras to set it manually.

The aperture does 2 things:

Firstly, because it controls the amount of light that enters the camera it follows that it controls how light or dark the image is.

Secondly, and more interestingly, it controls the amount of the image that is in focus. This is known as ‘depth of field’. The size of the aperture is referred to in ‘f-stops’ or ‘f-numbers’. The smaller the f-number the larger the aperture and the larger the f-number the smaller the aperture. Thus at f2 the aperture is opened wider then at f9. The typical f-stops on a camera are: f1, f1.4, f2.8, f4, f5.6, f8, f11, f16, f22 etc. Each f-number on the scale lets in twice as much or twice as less light then the next or previous number on the scale. So f1.4 lets in twice as much light as f2.8 and f16 lets in twice as less light then f11.

The aperture also affects something called ‘depth of field’ – Depth of field is the amount of the image that is in focus. When you focus your lens on a subject, anything at that same distance will similarly be in focus. Things that are closer to or further from the camera lens will gradually – or drastically – be less sharp. Your camera’s aperture controls how large of a zone is acceptably in focus.

At large apertures depth of field will be ‘shallow’ so less of the background will be in focus and at smaller apertures depth of field will be ‘deep’ so more of the background will be in focus. >
F3.5 – 1/13sec – iso 100
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