Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Going Back to Basics...

I joined an online photography course that goes through several lessons with activities to complete at the end of each lesson.  This week was all about aperture.   I will share some of the information that I learned...

The size of the aperture, or f/stop, of a lens determines how much of your photograph is in focus.  In a nutshell, the WIDER the aperture, the more light that passes through the camera causing LESS of your photo to be in focus.  Many use wide apertures for portraits.  This allows you to focus sharply on the person or object and have a very blurred background.  A LOW f/stop (such as f/1.4 or f/2.8 ect) is considered a wide-open aperture. 


Now, the SMALLER the aperture, the less light that passes through the camera causing MORE of your photo to be in focus.  Many use small apertures when photographing landscapes since you want to capture more of the scene in focus.  A HIGH f/stop (such as f/22) is considered a closed aperture.

I took the pictures above with two very different aperture settings, the lowest my 50mm lense would go (f/1.4) and the highest it would go (f/22).  BIG difference!  The picture below is one that I took somewhat in the middle (f/8.0).  You can see the difference when looking at the stone and surrounding leaves.



6 comments:

  1. How come Leslie never responds to any of these outstanding posts?

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  2. I think these are just red winter berries. They are on my bamboo shrub.

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  3. It'd be bad if it was a picture of London eating them. HA!

    Great info Leslie. I'm interested in learning too!!!

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  4. Nice lesson Leslie! I'm learning right with you!

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  5. Great info. I'd love to learn all this stuff! We have 2 cameras that I haven't mastered yet.

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