What is the aperture setting, and how does it affect my images?

Answer 1

Aperture is the opening in the diaphragm within the lens, and it is also one of the three settings that make up the Exposure Triangle which affects the appearance of your photographs. Photographers measure the aperture setting in f-stops. Smaller f-stop number settings mean your aperture is larger, and larger f-stop settings mean your aperture is smaller. The aperture and f-stop are inversely related.

Most basically, changing the aperture size is one of the ways a photographer can control how much light enters the lens to ultimately strike the sensor in your camera, determining how bright or dark your image is. A wide aperture lets in a lot of light!

There's something else aperture affects in your photos, too, though, that's even cooler. You know how professional photographs often have one area of the image in sharp focus with the rest blurred out creating a cool artistic effect? In an image, we call that a shallow depth of field (DoF), and you can create it by using relatively smaller f-stop numbers. It also helps if you are photographing an object that is fairly close to you with background objects in the distance. That allows you to get a shallow depth of field in your image when shooting with your smaller f-stop.

I'm a photographer and certified photography (K-12 Visual Art) teacher with five years experience teaching photography classes full-time. Check out my profile for a list of topics I love teaching, and let me know what you want to learn!

Answer 2

Aperture is the opening in the lens that allows light to pass through while taking a photo. It's like the pupil of our eyes! Aperture is shown with the f-stop icon on our digital cameras, i.e. F8, or F/8. The smaller the number, the larger the aperture. For example, F16 is a much smaller aperture than F2.

Altering the aperture can do two main things to an image: change the depth of the photo and change the exposure of a photo.

To change the depth, a larger aperture will give the photo more blur wherever the complement of the focal point is. Smaller aperture will just lessen that blur.

To change the exposure, a larger aperture will allow more light into the lens and give you a brighter photo. A smaller aperture will do the opposite and give you a darker photo. So similarly to our pupils that are larger in the dark, you'd probably want to use a larger aperture if you're taking photos at night.

Happy photographing!