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Yes. Aperture. It’s magic, I tell you. I already talked in Photography 101: Exposure about how opening up your aperture (using a lower f-stop) lets in more light, and closing it lets in less, but I didn’t really talk about the magic that comes along with this change and why (other than letting in more or less light), you’d want one setting over the other.

Wide Open Aperture

I have a wonderful lens often called a “nifty fifty”. It gets that name because it’s a 50mm lens that can get some pretty amazing results – mostly because of how wide you can open the aperture. The kit lens that came with my camera can only open at most to f/3.5 but the “nifty fifty” goes to f/1.8 (or, if you want to spend a bit more money, f/1.4 – but I didn’t spend that much money). It’s a prime lens – which means it has a focal length of only 50mm, so I can’t zoom in and out with it. But I have that magical f/1.8. What’s so magical about it? Check out this picture:

Notice how only one landscaping light is in focus? That’s called a shallow depth of field, and it’s a great way to focus attention on something in your photo. It’s a rather pleasing artistic way of drawing our eye to just that one lamp. All the out-of-focus parts of the photo are called “bokeh”. So, this photo has a lot of delicious bokeh. A lot of photographers (like myself) are slightly addicted to bokeh. I need to go to Bokehs Anonymous.

What’s my favorite kind of bokeh, you ask? Lights. Lights make beautiful bokeh. Check out this photo:

It’s a light at a local bar, all the green dots in the background are actually the liquer bottles lit up with a green light underneath them. So pretty (imo).

Middle-of-the-road Aperture

I like to stick with f/8 or f/11 when taking landscape photos – because it gets most everything in focus and still lets in enough light to be able to stick with a low ISO (to prevent noise) and fast shutter speed (to prevent motion blur). I’ve also heard that f/8 and f/11 will look about like what you will see with your naked eye (or, eye with contacts/glasses, I suppose). Here’s a landscape shot I took at f/8:

If I had used a lower f-stop (like the f/1.8 I used in both of the photos above), either the grass in front would have been in focus but not the trees in the background or vice-versa.

Closed Aperture

I know we all usually try to avoid sun flares in our photos (not always, though, they often add a cool artistic flare, imo), however there is something really cool you can do with tightly closed apertures (like f/22). You can get a sunburst! check this one out:

Aperture Priority Mode

I used to shoot almost always in Manual Mode. I forced myself to do it because I wanted to learn how everything interacted together – and I’m really glad I did that. However, know that I’ve got it all down, I find that I shoot in aperture priorty the most. This way I can decide what aperture I want (do I want a shallow depth of field with lots of bokeh? set it to f/1.8) and my camera will pick the correct shutter speed for me. It’s really a great time-saver and I’ve found it really helpful in trying to get the shot. When I was in manual mode, there were times when whatever it was I was trying to get a photo of (animal, bird, insect… or person…) would run off before I got a chance to set all the settings. So try out Aperture Priority mode on your camera (if you have it) and trust the camera :).

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