Playing With Aperture

Basically, aperture is an opening which light is allowed to pass into the photosensor. It is use to control the amount of light reaching the photosensor. The amount of light will then determine the sharpness of your photo.

How aperture works is when light is low, it will open wider and when light is too much, the aperture will be narrow to a smaller opening.

Aperture is classified as f/value (sometime F-stop, f numbers and aperture value) and they are double in the classification, like f/4, f/8, f/16 and so on. I used to wonder why they classify the aperture with double number. Then I found that as the value double, it actually allows double the amount of light into the camera compare to the previous f/value.

When comes to photography, aperture doesn't work alone. It usually works with the shutter speed to give you a good picture. Fast shutter speed is to use for capturing motion picture like a soccer player in action while slow shutter speed is for you to take portrait and landscape pictures.

Since you are playing with aperture and shutter speed, I might as well let you know that for you to really feel the satisfaction of capturing the perfect picture, you need to take into account of the depth of field too. When you have a small aperture, you will see a picture with focus from the foreground to the background. When you have a larger aperture, you will have a picture that only focuses on your foreground and this is usually applied in macro photography. So, the smaller the aperture, you will get higher depth of field.

However, the aperture of most of the compact digital camera in the market now are set to be automatic and as disappointing as it may sound, sometime you just have to compromise with the picture quality you get.

Some of you might ask that don't photography become easier when things are set to automatic? Don't you have less frustration when the camera select the aperture and shutter speed automatically as require during the circumstances?

I too used to think that leaving the aperture setting to automatic will be easy on me. I can just point the camera to my subject and shoot the picture. But as you gain more exposure to digital photography, you will feel that something is missing in your picture.

And that is when I realize I really need to look into a more advance digital camera and you should too if you want to enjoy better picture quality.

By the way, the festive season is here. So, I would like to wish you merry Christmas and a happy new year. :-)

Have fun photographing,

Michael Wong. :-)