I get a lot of emails asking about Aperture, so I thought I’d start by talking about this for a bit. Please let me know what you think about the article idea, and content!

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Here you can see the iris is mid-way between being very closed and very open, this is a normal amount of light, as it were. There are many things that aperture can do, technical and artistic.

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I think I had better first describe to you how people talk about Aperture. The common way of measuring Aperture is by ’stops’ and ‘f-stops’, and they are written like this: ‘f/16′ or ‘f16‘. The number is referring to how big or small the hole is, confusingly, the bigger the number, the smaller the hole.

The range of numbers varies from camera to camera, (lens to lens), and can for example be f/1.8 to f/32. (Avoiding extremities).

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Artistically, Aperture plays an important role in photography, and is effectively the function that alters the DOF, (Depth of Field), meaning the amount of the image which is in focus. This is a great function to be used when taking close up pictures, or for dramatic/moody images.

Here is a great use of depth of field:

Showing clearly the main element of the image, the camera, apart from the background, and the foreground which are very much out of focus.

To control the depth of field using the Aperture, you first have to work out what you want, either:

• a) The Whole Image in Focus
• b) A Selective Focus, (as above)

Once you have decided upon this, you will be able to choose your aperture, now, for a moody selectively focused shot, you will have to choose the largest aperture possible, (the smallest number), normally around f/2.8, it may be less or more.

For a more crisp sharp shot, for example of a landscape, you will want a small aperture, (biggest number), for example, f/8 - f/32.

You will find that the compact cameras, or super zooms, and other all-in-one cameras will have a much more restrained and small range of apertures, whereas actual lens fitted to SLRs will have a much larger range.

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So, I think I have near enough finished explaining what Aperture is, and what it does, how to use it etc. I will summarise by saying this in a form of an image from ucbmug.org:

Hopefully you will be able to read that, as it summarises all of what I have said in this article.

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I hope you have found the first entry in my 101 series useful, and please let me know what you think!

Thanks a lot,

Charlie - Teenage Photographer