It’s time to talk about another couple of scary terms in photography.  Aperture and f-stop.  Did you ever wonder what they are, and whether you can use them to make your images better?

Think of your camera as an enclosed box. The lens is basically the hole through which light is allowed into the camera. Aperture is the size of the opening of the lens.

The unit with which we measure the size of the lens opening, aperture, is called f-stop.

The larger the f-stop, for example f/22, the tighter the aperture/lens opening.

The smaller the f-stop, for example f/2.8, the wider, more open the aperture.

See the chart below:

A smaller aperture will result in darker photos, whereas a larger aperture will allow more light to enter the lens for brighter photos.

Different aperture settings help with creating different depth of fields.  We’ll discuss that in another post coming soon. Stay tuned.

To learn more about aperture and other fundamentals of photography, sign up for one of our photography classes here.