HOW TO OPERATION A CAMERA - PART 3: APERTURE

Aperture is one of the three pillars of photography (the other two being Shutter Speed and ISO, which are two other chapters in my HOW TO OPERATION A CAMERA guide. In this chapter, we go through everything you need to know about aperture and how it works.

What is aperture?

According to Kanopy (2015), the camera is designed by simulating the operation of the human eye, which is a converging lens that can change focus by widening the pupil.

Inside a digital camera lens, there is a hole called Aperture. It acts as a pupil by adjusting its door to control the amount of light that reaches the camera's sensor.

A lower aperture number means a larger aperture lens or larger holes.

A higher aperture number means a smaller, smaller hole.

According to Chen, I (n.d.), these adjustments also affect the range between the closest and furthest subjects in focus in a photo, giving the photo a depth of field.

With a small F, the aperture is wide open give the image have a shallow depth of field as the background is blurred to focus on the main subject.

On the contrary, when adjusting the F higher, the aperture will be narrower leading the scope of the image to be narrowed but more subjects will be in focus.

In these photos, I have different depth for the image by remaining the distance between the subject and the camera and changing the aperture.

Reference:

1. Chen, I., Duchesneau, D. and Jensen, V., 2022. What is lens aperture?. [online] Adobe. Available at: <https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/photography/discover/aperture-priority.html> [Accessed 8 July 2022].

2. Kanopy (2015) Aperture and Depth of Field. San Francisco, California, USA]: Kanopy Streaming.