Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Aperture and its Effects

So.. aperture is an amazing thing in photography. I mean.. amazing. Seriously. It can be the ultimate factor in a good photo and a bad one. Aperture is the factor in a lens that controls the depth of field of an image. In other words, how much of an image is in focus. A lower aperturer is an amazing choice for portraits and single subject photos. Where as a higher aperture is good for landscapes and other wide angle shots. When you start playing with aperture setting on your camera.. There are a few things that you're going to notice. Aperture is directly connected to your shutter speed or f/stop. This means if you change one, you will have to change the other to make up for that change. Lower apertures make the lens more sensitive to light. Since you are allowing more light to pass through the lens, a higher shutter speed is needed to have a properly exposed image. And, naturally, it is just the opposite for high aperture. High aperture settings allows less light through your lens and you need a lower shutter speed to allow your camera more time to capture the image. Just remember.. low aperture, high shutter... high aperture.. low shutter. Bam! You're now an expert. My favorite lens for low apertures is definitely my 35mm 1.8 lens. The "1.8" refers to the lowest aperture possible for that particular lens. I have added an example of two images. Both have the same subject.. but with one I knocked the aperture all the way down. And the other I bumped it up quite a bit. Both were taken at the same distance with the same lens. Same everything.. except the aperture and shutter speed. Because you can't change one without the other, remember. (:






This one has the high aperture. As you can see, it looks like an accidental shot or something.. Like "What were you going for dude?"













Then there's the low aperture. Looks a whole lot more like a purposeful photo. It makes the tripod the definite subject. "Clearly this person wanted us to look at his tripod.. hmm..."









And this is the magic of aperture explained in a very obvious way. More to come on this subject. Because I am very attracted to low aperture photographs. They just set such a wonderful mood for a subject. Let me know what you think about this blog post and I would love to see your examples of your aperture tests as well! More to come. 


This is the lens I used for this. Check it out!


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