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What is Aperture?

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What is Aperture? Aperture settings controls the lens diaphragm that regulated the amount of light your image will have when the shutter opens.

What is Aperture? Aperture settings control the lens diaphragm that regulates the amount of light your image will have when the shutter opens.  You have heard the term f-stop, this is calculated by dividing the length of the lens’s diameter by the focal length. Like your ever going to do that.

Not to worry just get the concept and you won’t have to think about doing the math.

The largest aperture is actually the lowest f-stop number (f1.3 to f5). By choosing the lower f-stop and focusing on your central point of interest you will  minimize the background. The central image will become the focal point of your picture and the background will be have a softer focus. This lends itself to portraits and close-ups.

Smaller aperture settings (f16 to f31) will balance the focus of your image more perspective and an overall balance of focus. Landscapes are where you are going to want to up the f-stop. Have you ever taken a picture of a large group of people to find that a few of your subjects were in focus but the people on the edges were a little blurry, up the f-stop to solve that problem.

Mid range aperture settings can be applied when the image isn’t a close up or a landscape shot. Aperture setting in the range of f8 to f11 is a balance of the two extreme settings and will give you well defined images as a rule.

Give it a try, practice with low, high and mid range setting and see the results.

Example of an image shot with a low f-stop. Like this image, download it now for "Free".

Th is image is a good illustration of the depth of field you can obtain by using a lower f-stop. Where does your eye go first? The tennis ball is in the most foreground of the image and the main focus point. As you can see the ball has the sharpest focus thus you eye tend to see it first. The border collie who is going to catch this ball is the next in the progression. By now you don’t really care what’s in the background and as you can see it has the softest focus.

Shutter speed plays a big role in this image because of the speed of the event. But more on that later.

The event rider was taken with mid range f-stop setting and you can see there more of a balance between foreground and the background.

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