Aperture 101

Let’s learn about aperture 👇🏻

📷 f-stops are the measurements used to describe how open your lens is - think of it as the iris of an eyeball.

👁️ If your iris is small, your pupil is large. Dilated pupils would have small f-stops. Get it?

🌞 Smaller f-stops - aka dilated pupils - allow more light into the lens, resulting in more bokeh (that background blur) and a lighter exposure.

🌚 Larger f-stops - aka tiny pupils - allow less light into the lens, resulting in greater depth of field in focus (less background blur) and a darker exposure.

For example, let's look at this cactus.

At f2, the background is very blurred and exposure is very light. At f22, more of the background is in focus and the exposure is darker.

Learning about the technicalities of photography and learning how to use your camera in manual can be daunting, so break it down and practice getting used to one setting at a time!