How do you choose the right aperture? What the heck is aperture?

I remember going into camera stores and wanting to know how to get better shots of my kids. The photography lingo made me dizzy. My question was simple. How do you blur the background so your shots look like this? Their answer had something to do with ratios, speed of light, the golden F 16 rule and a bunch of other stuff that didn’t make any sense to me.

Wikipedia’s definition of aperture is; The aperture stop of a photographic lens can be adjusted to control the amount of light reaching the film or image sensor. In combination with variation of shutter speed, the aperture size will regulate the film’s degree of exposure to light. Typically, a fast shutter speed will require a larger aperture to ensure sufficient light exposure, and a slow shutter speed will require a smaller aperture to avoid excessive exposure.

Did that make sense? 🙂

Me Ra’s definition; aperture is how blurry I decide to make my background. If I want it really blurry I have the aperture (or F stop) down to a 1.4, 2.0 or 2.8. If I want to take a shot where all the trees in the background are in detail, I have to bump up to a F 8 or F 16.

So how do you know what aperture to choose? You’ve got to answer, ‘how blurry do I want my background to be?’ and ‘what is my photo about?’

Blaze and I took a walk along the waterfront this last week. I brought my camera and had the aperture already dialed in at a 2.8 (this is where Brian and I shoot most the time) so I could get shots of Blaze in focus with the beach blurred behind him. But then we heard it. That signature sound of a train blowing his horn! Blaze was so excited he didn’t know what to do, so he covered his ears–“Too loud mama!” he yelled. 🙂

Then he decided to just chill and watch this giant locomotive pass him by.

(I could just eat him up! :))

I wanted the train a bit more in focus then just a blur. Someday Blaze would see this photo, and I wanted to capture the train racing by, so I dialed my aperture up to a F 5.6. (Why not F 16? I thought it’d be nice to have the tree line and houses behind the train be a bit more blurred and so the shot would focus around Blaze and the train.)

The rest of the recipe for all my recipe lovers: I had my ISO set at 100. (I try to have my ISO as low as possible as much as possible. The lower you go the better your color saturation to the image and overall richness.) My shutter speed was at a 1/160, and my aperture for all three images was at 5.6.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Exercise for “Choosing the Right Aperture!”

1. This exercise is more about understanding your lens and camera ability rather than shooting composition. Let’s answer the question, ‘what is the aperture range on my lens?’

2. Some of you have lenses that came with your camera and on the front of the lens it might say these numbers 3.5-5.6. Check your lens out and see what your numbers say. (If it says 2.8, jump up and down b/c that’s AWESOME!)

3. Put your camera on AV mode (if it’s a Canon) or A mode (if it’s Nikon). This gives you the freedom to change your aperture to what you want. In essence, you get to decide how blurry you want your image. And the camera will decide how fast your shutter speed should be.

4. Try taking a photo at a 3.5 in low light and your camera will probably not focus or maybe it won’t even give you the option of going down to a 3.5–as if it didn’t exist on your camera. How high do you have to bump your aperture up before it will take the photo?

4. Now go outside on a sunny day, and try it again. Are the aperture choices different? You should be able to go lower.

5. This is where it gets fun b/c you start developing an awareness of what kind of shots you want and what you need to take those shots. You begin to venture off the “Green Box.” And you start to understand why you may want a different lens that can go to a 2.8 or even 1.4 if you’re really getting into it!

____________________________________________________________________________________

To learn more about me visit About Me Ra.

For information on Me Ra’s popular photography workshops, visit CONFIDENCE!