How to Use Your Camera Aperture Settings by Summerana

H O W T O U S E Y O U R
C A M E R A ’ S A P E R T U R E
S E T T I N G S
a S u m m e r a n a g u i d e
e v e r y t h i n g y o u n e e d t o k n o w t o
u n d e r s t a n d a p e r t u r e , a n d h o w a n d w h e n t o
u s e i t
w r i t t e n b y R h i a n n o n D ' A v e r c

T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S
h e r e ' s w h a t t h i s g u i d e w i l l c o v e r
Aperture, f-stop, exposure, white balance – all of these terms
can seem pretty mystifying when you’re using a DSLR for the
first time. If you just keep your camera set in auto mode, you
could get away with never knowing what they mean, but you’ll
also never be able to control your camera, get it to produce
the results you want, or create pieces of art.
Any usage, from professional portraits right down to vacation
snaps can benefit from some professional knowledge. Let's
get started learning what aperture means, how to use the
aperture settings on your camera, and what results you can
get.
w h a t i s
a p e r t u r e ?
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w h a t i s
a n f -
s t o p ?
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h o w d o i
p i c k t h e
r i g h t
a p e r t u r e ?
t a k e y o u r
l e a r n i n g
f u r t h e r
5 s e l f - t e s t
q u i z
Previous page: Image
by Sergey Causelove
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What is
Aperture?
Here’s the million-dollar question: just what is aperture,
anyway? Aperture is the name given to a hole or opening
allowing light to pass through – so, in this context, it
refers to the size of the opening in your lens. You can
actually change this setting in the camera, just like how
the iris in your eye changes size depending on the
environment.
If you look into your lens, without the camera body
attached, you’ll see a hole right at the far side of it. It
looks more or less circular, and when you twist the F-stop
ring on your lens, you’ll see the blades of the shutter
making that hole bigger and smaller.
When we talk about camera settings, we usually use F-
stop to define how closed or open the aperture is. The
reason we need to talk about F-stop at all is because it
controls something really important: your depth of field.
Imagine a grid stretching out in front of your camera – flat
across the ground and going out as far as you can see in
the distance. This is your ‘field’. Now, imagine selecting
a band across the middle of the field that will be in focus,
while everything else is out of focus. The size of this band
is your ‘depth of field’. Since it goes out straight from your
lens, anything which is in the same band of your field will
be in focus, whether they are to the left of frame, the
right, or in the center.
And it’s not only the depth of field which is affected by
the aperture, either – it also affects the amount of light
coming into your camera’s sensor. Think about it: smaller
hole for the light to get through means less light overall,
right?
“smaller hole for the light to
get through = less light
overall”
Images by Leung Cho Pan, teamtime at Getty Images, and Irmoske at Getty Images
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What is an
F-Stop?
Now that we know a bit about aperture and how it works,
we also need to talk about a term that is very important in
photography: F-Stop, or F-Number. But what is an F-Stop?
The first thing you need to know is that the numbers work
the opposite of how you might think. The smaller the
number, the larger your aperture actually is. So, f11 will be a
lot smaller than f2.8. Why do we use such an illogical
system? Well, when you know the reason, you’ll see that it’s
anything but illogical: we’re talking in fractions.
Let’s go back to that visual depth of field grid we were
looking at. Now you should be able to see the whole field
and divide it by fractions. An F-number of f/1.4 covers most
of the field in front of you. A sixteenth of the field,
however, at f16, is a much smaller chunk of the grid.
By the way, there are a lot of ways to write F-numbers.
You might see F11, f11, F/11, F11.0, or f/11. They all mean the
same thing – it’s just down to a personal preference of how
you might want to write them!
In most cases, cameras will offer settings that cover the
following range, from largest aperture to smallest:
In other words, an F-stop of f8 is actually one-eighth of
your aperture, so you just have to put your elementary
math to play here to remember that a fraction of oneeleventh
is a lot smaller than a fraction of one-third! Now
here’s another trick to remember: a large aperture will give
you a large amount of blur in the foreground and
background. Get it?
f1.4 – f2 – f2.8 – f4 – f5.6 –
f8 – f11 – f16 – f22 – f32
Image by Tippappatt at Getty Images, Redphotographer at Getty Images, and Volokhatiuk at Getty Images
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How Do I Pick
the Right
Aperture?
This is the bit you’ve been waiting to sink your teeth into:
how do you pick the right aperture, knowing what you
know now about how it works? Well, switch your camera
into either Aperture Mode or full Manual Mode and let’s
play around.
There are two things you need to consider when setting
your aperture:
(If you don’t know how to do this, don’t worry – we’ll
explain it in other Summerana guides!)
The general rule for light is that the darker the
environment is, the larger your aperture will need to be in
order to capture a properly exposed image. But you can
also under-or-over-expose the image on purpose – that’s
the beauty of coming away from automatic mode!
There are limitations to which F-stop you can select, and
these are usually determined by your lens. Some lenses
simply can’t go as wide as others! Cheaper lenses might
only be able to go down to f4, while top-of-the-range
options can take you down to f1.4. That’s why you might
not see all options available to you when going through
your settings.
1. Your desired depth of field
2. The amount of light available
If the depth of field is your priority – for example, when
you need everything to be in focus, or you’re trying to
create a lovely detail shot which blurs out everything else
– then you can use your ISO and shutter speed settings
to try and compensate the required amount of light.
Images by Radu Bercan, Gorlov at Getty Images, and Madisonwi at Getty Images
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Self-Test Quiz
Check your learning with our self-test quiz! Can you remember the
answers? If you can’t, you’ll find them in the pages of this guide.
1. What is the definition of aperture?
2. What kind of mathematical figure does the F-stop
represent?
3. With a larger F-number, will you get a larger or
smaller depth of field?
4. For an image that is almost all in focus, which F-stop
should you choose?
5. What’s the difference between F11 and f/11.0?
6. What other settings can you change to compensate
for light when you have chosen a specific F-stop?
7. When setting up a shot, you find out that you can’t
go any further down than f.4. Why might this be?
8. What two reasons would make you want to change
your F-stop?
Images by Kostas Kalomiris with Getty Images, Salman Hussain with Getty Images, and Svetography with Getty
Images
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Take Your Learning Further
Point your camera at any subject you like – it really
doesn’t matter what it is. Now your challenge is to try and
capture different types of focus. Try shooting with a small
F-stop to get as much of the image as possible in focus.
Now try narrowing your depth of field with a large F-stop,
which will get you a large amount of background blur.
Compensate for the changes in light by adjusting your
shutter speed and ISO (or using Aperture Mode so the
camera will fix those for you). Do this until you feel
confident that you can capture the depth of field that you
want every time!
If you loved this guide by
Summerana, head to
Summerana.com for more!
About the writer
Rhiannon D’Averc is a fashion and portrait photographer, as well as the published author of more than 50 books. She is the
Chief Editor of London Runway, an indie fashion magazine. Find more of her work on Twitter by following @rhiannondaverc.
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