Vol 3 - Aperture Practice
Week 3! Yay! We’ve learned about the exposure triangle in week 1, and we’ve practiced shutter speed in week 2, now we’re ready for APERTURE!
Aperture is how wide your camera’s shutter opens when the camera takes a picture. the smaller the number (like 1.4 or 3.5) the wider the opening is. The larger the number (16 or 22) the smaller the opening is. Totally confusing right? Just remember that logically the aperture is backwards… big number = small opening, small number = big opening.
Just like shutter speed, your camera has a setting that allows you to control aperture and the camera will take care of everything else!
On Nikon cameras this is an “A” on the mode dial/wheel.
On Canon cameras this is “Av” on the mode dial/wheel.
Turn your camera to this mode and get a few trinkets (dice, pens, bottles, anything) and set them up in a line with objects getting further away from you.
Turn your camera to a wide aperture (low number) by turning your setting dial to the lowest number (this will vary based on your lens). It may be as low as 1.4 or 4.8. Take a picture and try to focus on the item in the middle. You may notice that the items in front and behind are blurry.
Side note - sorry for the quality below, picture of a picture and all.
Now turn your camera to a small aperture (high number) this may be 16 or 22 based on your lens and take a picture of the item in the middle. You may notice the items in front and behind are more “in focus” than they were before (notice the front of the table is more in focus below).
*note - if you are in a darker room or don’t have a lot of light your camera will have to compensate by automatically slowing the shutter speed. If the shutter speed is too slow your image may be blurry - this is called camera shake and is due to natural movements of your hand - more on this later. If this is the case, turn on more lights and see if it helps.
Try with a lot of different objects to get a feel for how your aperture changes based on the settings you select on your camera!