Tag Archives: aperture

30 Days of Photography Tips… Day 2

DAY #2!

TIP #2: When setting up your manual camera settings, set your aperture second.

When you have your camera on manual [M], and after setting your ISO  first, I would recommend setting your aperture second. Aperture is the hole or opening in your lens that lets in light. The size of the opening determines how much light comes into your camera as well as how sharp or blurry the background is going to be in your image.

The aperture setting is also known and referred to as “F-stop”. These terms can be used interchangeable. The smaller the F-stop number, the more light that will be able to enter your camera. For example, F2.0 will allow a lot more light to come into your camera than the setting F16. You can keep learning about aperture more here.

Aperture is what you use to control and create that blurry loveliness behind the subject, often referred to as bokeh. This picture below was taken with an aperture of F2.8 and the leaves and sunlight have become blurry and soft behind the little girl.

30 Days of Photography Tips... Day 2

30 Days of Photography Tips... Day 2

aperture, F-stops, what the what?

Aperture  is the hole or opening in your lens that lets in light. The size of the opening determines how much light comes into your camera as well as how sharp or blurry the background is going to be in your image. The aperture in this image below was shot at F 2.8. See the blurry background? And the lovely amount of light that was able to enter through my lens? Well….that’s due to my F stop, my aperture.

aperture, F stops, what the what?

My manual settings for this shot:
ISO – 200
shutter speed – 1/400 second
aperture – F 2.8

aperture, F stops, what the what?

your aperture and changing your focus point

Remember aperture? If not, check out my definitions page. It’s the opening in your lens that allows you to do two things. One, it allows more light in and two, it controls your depth of field (how much is going to be sharply in focus in the background.

These two pictures below are taken at the aperture (also known as f stop) of 2.2. That means the hole in my lens is open up really wide, the hole is big. So, my depth of field behind my subject is shallow, creating a blurry background. The background is not sharply in focus. Right? So that’s a shallow depth of field. Make sense? These two pictures were taken with the same settings but a different focus point. When taking the picture on the left I focused on my little boy’s eyes. In the picture on the right I didn’t change any of my settings, but instead I focused on the donut. :)

My manual settings for this shot were:
ISO – 800 (inside the donut shop)
aperture – 2.2 (open pretty wide open for light and for a very shallow depth of field)
shutter speed – 1/250 second

your aperture and changing your focus point

your aperture and changing your focus point