Monday, December 19, 2011

Water Fountain Week - Day Three

Water Fountain 1a
54mm, 0.6 sec f22 @ ISO 125


Alright people! For todays very truncated lesson we're going to learn some of the importance of aperture or f-stop. If you aren't aware of what aperture is, in the world of photography it is one of three settings that you can adjust to get different results. These settings are: The lens aperture, the cameras shutter speed and the cameras ISO. All of these I will talk about some day but today I'm only focusing on aperture. Aperture is also conveniently highlighted above!

As you adjust the aperture-setting you are primarily adjusting the depth of field. By changing your depth of field you can change how much of your picture is in focus. SO, take a look at the photo above and the photo from yesterday as well as the f-numbers provided. (Remember, "Aperture" and "F-Stop" are more-or-less interchangeable here). Notice how as the number is increased (from 2.8 in yesterdays photo to 22 in todays photo) the amount of photo that is in focus increases as well. In other words, the lower the f-stop/aperture, the less that is in focus in the photo. Ergo, if you want to just get a single subject sharp with a blurred background you'll wanted a lower aperture number, whereas if want to see as much as possible you'll want a higher aperture number. Ta-da! Knowledge!

Feel like you've learned something today? Yes? Great! Next time I'll probably tell you about shutter speed. Then someday I'll tell you that these're related and you're going to need to take that into account... In the meantime though, feel better knowing you can see the difference between apertures and why you would want to use a smaller f-stop over a big one. Yay!

No comments: