Bacon Lettuce Photo

by Joe

It’s all about Aperture.

Aperture is what controls your cameras ability to create depth of field (DOF). Remember those nice portraits of someone with their face crystal clear and the background all blurry? That’s aperture. How about those photos of beautiful landscapes and sceneries where the foreground and background are all in focus? Aperture.

Here is an example, this is a little fun Valentine’s Day photo that I took.

Notice that part of the cupcake and the M&M are in focus while the rest of the image is blurred. That blur is called bokeh.

In technical info, the aperture is referred to as the f-stop. If you see data such as f/1.8 or f/22 it is referring to how open or closed the aperture is in the lens. The photo above was taken with a 50mm lens with an aperture of f/1.8

Think of aperture as the pupil of your eye. Expanding and contracting to allow light in but also allowing you to focus. If you close one eye, like a camera, and bring your finger close to your eye and focus on it, you will see bokeh in your peripheral vision.

To reduce the bokeh you just close down your aperture more by increasing the f-stop number. This will reduce the DOF.

Here is a photo that I took below is with an aperture of f/8.0

Notice that the background is clearer.

Here area couple diagrams.

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Now if you can think about how aperture works in coordination with shutter speed and ISO, you are on your way to taking great images.