Exposure Triangle

Understanding Aperture!

In my experience, Aperture is the most useful setting to help beginners better understand and enjoy their digital SLR camera. Aperture allows you to be creative! You are the storyteller, you choose how the viewer perceives your photograph. Of all camera setting, it is also the easiest to get the gist of.

In my first Photography simple learning blog, I am explaining about the Aperture. So what is Aperture in Layman’s terms?

Aperture is basically a hole in your lens that allows light to travel through it and towards the camera sensor. As the Photographer, you get to choose how large the hole is by setting the Aperture F-Stop.

The smaller the Aperture F number, the faster your camera takes to shoot the image. This is due to a larger hole, allowing more light in to hit the camera sensor with each exposure.

The larger the F number, the more time your camera takes to shoot the image. This is due to smaller hole that allows less light in.

Why is this useful to Understand ? If you take a photo and find the result is too dark, or your camera is taking a long time to shoot, then allow more light in by changing the Aperture to a lower F number.

The camera’s Aperture setting also determines how much of the subject or scenery is in focus. Be creative and practice more at least a week set your camera to Aperture priority until you fully understand what this setting does.

In the next lesson I’ll talk about ISO.

Aperture chart

Leave a Reply
