Aperture and f-stops

The essence of photography is recording light. Light enters a camera and is recorded on a chip or on film. The lens has an opening called an aperture.

On all but the simplest of cameras the aperture can be adjusted to open very wide or close down to a very small pinhole. Why do we want to open or close the aperture?

The reason is because some situations are very bright like a sunny beach at noon. In that case we set the aperture to have a smaller opening. But other situations such as the interior of a barn on a cloudy day call for a wide aperture.

One analogy for the aperture would be salt shaker. Instead of letting light enter a camera think of putting salt on your soup. Do you want a little bit of salt to come out of three little holes? Maybe you would prefer twenty large holes so you can have nice salty soup. That is how the aperture is. The lens has settings called f-stops that allow you to regulate the amount of light coming in. For some odd reason an f-stop with a large number like f16 is a smaller opening that an f-stop with a small number like f4.

As you gain an understanding of apertures and f-stops you will be able to create great photos in situations that previously would have been problem.

We can also control light with the shutter speed. This will be discussed in an upcoming blog post.