Photography is a popular topic right now for a lot of bloggers with new cameras from Christmas, or else, with a New Year’s resolution to actually learn how to take pictures with their DSLRs! Like me.
I found a wonderful series by Aimee on It’s Overflowing! on photography basics, and I am going to follow her along while she takes us through it.
You can find my first photography post here. Today’s photography lesson will be on aperture. You can find Aimee’s lesson here and she gave us an assignment to work on aperture.
Without getting into the really technical parts of it, aperture will control how much light gets into your camera (along with other elements such as ISO and shutter speed).
It is useful to think of aperture when wanting to take pictures with a focal point up front and a blurred background.
Aperture is shown in f-stop on your camera. The lower the aperture, the more light gets in, and the higher the aperture, the less light.
To try and see what aperture does to your pictures, choose a subject and then take the same picture over and over only changing the aperture. On my camera, I will choose A on the dial (so everything except aperture is then on auto) and turn the subdial to change aperture settings.
This is what happens.
Here is f-stop 4.8. See how only what is in the foreground is in focus?
f/5.6- Still blurred in the background.
f/6.3
f/7.1
f/9- getting a little more focused in the background
f/10
f/13
f/16
f/20
f/32
I highly, highly recommend that you try this exercise if you want to become familiar with aperture and what it can do. Not only will you learn how to adjust the aperture on your camera, but the mysterious numbers will all of a sudden make sense.
Best of all, you will remember it!!!
Have fun trying it out.
January 31st, 2012 at 11:30 am
Hi Catherine…great post re: aperture assignment. I love your all of your pictures. They all look different with the depth of field but they are all beautiful. Silver, white ceramic, book spines and text are all in my favorites list. Have a very nice day! Karen
February 1st, 2012 at 6:55 am
Thank you so much, Karen!!
February 1st, 2012 at 7:00 am
[...] on with our lofty goal of learning to use the fancy dslr cameras, we are moving on from basics and aperture to shutter speed. Remember that we are following along with the fabulous Aimee, from It’s [...]
February 2nd, 2012 at 10:24 pm
AWESOME results!!! Each picture looks like it belongs in a frame!!! I’m totally impressed!!!
XO, Aimee
February 3rd, 2012 at 6:42 am
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