Controlling Exposure: the Aperture

Last time, we were introduced to a new session which is concerned with the topic of exposure. We learned that exposure is one of the most vital factors in photography since it is mainly concerned with light, and without light, there won’t be photography.

We discussed the two factors and considerations when it comes to the topic of exposure with the first one being the amount of light hitting your subject. The second factor is the amount of light you will be allowed to enter your camera and in the coming lessons, starting today, we will focus on this.

Today we will be talking about one of the ways you can let light inside your camera and that is through your lens - particularly through the aperture.

A Topic to Remember

If you have been keeping up with our lessons since the beginning, you should be able to have a little background on aperture already and the terms surrounding it. Also, if you haven’t noticed yet, the topic of the aperture is something that we keep on coming back to and I guess that really speaks to the importance of the said concept.

Learning about the aperture and how to properly set it is a constant fundamental in photography that you will be using from your beginning stages up until your professional level. Bottom line is that your knowledge regarding aperture is irreplaceable.

What we will be doing today is to finally complete your practical knowledge on aperture. By the end of today’s lesson, you will now be able to fully work with your aperture and learn to adapt to any situation or to inject your preferences in your images.

Aperture

Aperture, in some cases, is often referred to as the iris. The eye’s pupil is the one responsible for taking in the light in front of us in order for our brain to interpret what we are seeing. As you may have noticed, the human eye and the camera lens are greatly alike and the pupil of the camera lens that acts with the same purpose is the aperture, thus the term.

In technical terms, the aperture is often addressed as the f-stop. Since we are here to complete your knowledge on aperture already, we’re going to dig deeper and touch on the mathematics behind the terminologies.

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be one of those math lectures that people dread.

The Math behind f-stops

When you are adjusting your aperture, you will see something like f/8 or f/2.8 on your camera screen. These measurements are your f-stops and they indicate how wide or narrow your aperture’s opening is.

As promised, the math here isn’t that hard to understand. The “f” stands for the focal length which, as you may recall, is the distance your lens is at; you zoom your lens to 50mm then your focal length is 50.

To know the size of your aperture, simply divide your “f” or focal length by the number beside it as shown in your camera.

If you are shooting at a focal length of 50mm and your camera says that your aperture is f/8 then your aperture’s diameter is (50 ÷ 8 = 6.25) 6.25mm.

That wasn’t so bad, right?

The Implications

A mark of a true master of aperture adjustment is being able to adapt to different situations and we will help you with that, so stay with us in this one.

Obviously, the wider your aperture is, the more light you are allowing to get into your sensors which then equates to a brighter image. This means that if you are shooting in a low-light setting, you want your aperture to be wider and in the region of f/1.8-f/4.

On the other hand, an extremely sunny and vibrant condition will make use of a smaller aperture size in order to let less light in. Set your lens to around f/8-f/11 if you want to capture sharp photos with great lighting.

At a focal length of 50mm, setting your lens to f/1.8 means that your aperture will have a diameter of around 27mm which is a lot bigger than the 6.25mm diameter of an f/8 setting. Reducing this diameter, in photography, is called stepping down.

Conclusion

So there you have it, your full lesson on aperture. We have discussed the concept of aperture a couple of times during the previous section through short touches. However, today, we focused on it and finished it off.

Just to recap, the aperture is your camera lens’ pupil with the only difference being who controls it. Biologically, your pupil dilates on its own in order to bring in more light and allow you to see in darker places. In photography, however, this responsibility falls manually on you and it’s up to you to make the necessary adjustments in given conditions.

As promised, now that you’ve finished your lesson on aperture, you should now be a step closer to gaining total independence in photography.

We’ll polish your aperture chart in the next lesson so we can finally let the topic of aperture rest and fall solely into your hands already for practice. Be sure to get your peers involved as well and keep sharing!