Lesson one is on basic aperture training. Aperture and depth of field are the main reasons I wanted an SLR, I love the look of blurry backgrounds and sharply focused subjects, so I wanted to master this first. Aperture is probably the one thing I am most confident at but I still have a lot to learn.
Basically the size of the aperture, (or f-stop) of a lens determines how much of your photograph is in focus. The f-stop numbers refer to how open or closed the aperture on the lens is. The wider the opening of the lens, the greater the amount of light that enters your camera- which means that when your aperture is wide open, your focus will be shallower and fewer things in your photo will be in focus. The smaller the opening, the smaller amount of light that will enter which means that your focus is deeper and more of your photo will be in focus.
It is confusing though because the smaller the f-stop, the wider the aperture opening. So, f/1.4 would mean the aperture is wide open, whereas f/22 would mean an almost closed aperture.
The way I remember this is:
Lower f/stop means less photo in focus
Higher f/stop means more photo in focus
Onto the examples. I decided to use Morgan's Kong as the subject. In the first example, I had my aperture as far as my lens would open- which is f/3.5. You can see that the Kong is in focus- you can even see some evidence of Morgan hair on it, but you can't really tell what the background is.
In the second example, I had the aperture half open and you can start to make out some of the background, but still very blurry.
In the last example, I had the aperture almost closed, and you can clearly see the fence and even our neighbor's house in the background.
It is confusing though because the smaller the f-stop, the wider the aperture opening. So, f/1.4 would mean the aperture is wide open, whereas f/22 would mean an almost closed aperture.
The way I remember this is:
Lower f/stop means less photo in focus
Higher f/stop means more photo in focus
Onto the examples. I decided to use Morgan's Kong as the subject. In the first example, I had my aperture as far as my lens would open- which is f/3.5. You can see that the Kong is in focus- you can even see some evidence of Morgan hair on it, but you can't really tell what the background is.
In the second example, I had the aperture half open and you can start to make out some of the background, but still very blurry.
In the last example, I had the aperture almost closed, and you can clearly see the fence and even our neighbor's house in the background.
f/3.5
f/22
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