You’ve just witnessed a kingfisher in all its brilliance swoop up its catch – a sight that’s left you in awe. From the edge of your eye, you see another one heading for the kill. In one instinctive moment, you snap up your camera and swing it into position to catch the action. Your timing is perfect, the angle is right, it’s meant to be the next Nat Geo award winning picture. There’s only one thing that’s gone wrong – the picture isn’t as bright or brilliant.
Have you been there, done that? Well, here’s what probably went wrong. You were shooting in semi-darkness and the camera only captured as much light as you allowed it. The next time around, all you have to do is widen the aperture!
Comparison of Aperture
What is an aperture, you ask?
Well, an aperture is the opening in the lens through which light enters the camera and falls on the film or sensor. Controlling the size of the aperture will therefore control the amount of light entering the camera. The equation of how the aperture is related to the amount of light is pretty simple. The illustration below demonstrates it.
How do I control the aperture?
You can change the aperture by changing the f-stop or f-number on your lens rim or simply from the buttons in your camera.
f-stop? f-number? What on earth are these ‘f’ words anyways?
‘f-stop’ or ‘f-number’ are technical terms by which the aperture is referred to in photography. ‘f-stop’ determines the ratio of the lens focal length to the diameter of the aperture.
Lower f-stop Effect
For those of you who are not too kicked about doing the math, all you’ve got to do is remember that:
- Increasing the ‘f-number’ will cause the aperture to decrease.
- Decreasing the ‘f-number’ will cause the aperture to increase.
Your camera or lens comes pre-calibrated with specific values of ‘f-number’ that are available for you to choose from. These values generally are: 1.4, 2.0, 2.8, 4.0, 5.6, 8.0, 11, 16, 22, 32, 45, 64 etc.
Why these strange numbers?
The reason is simple: to double your capacity at every step.
Higher f-stop Effect
As you ascend from one ‘f-stop’ value to the next, the amount of light entering the lens is halved. Similarly, if you descend from one ‘f-stop’ value to the one below it, the light is doubled.
Here’s an example to make things simpler. If you change the ‘f-number’ from 5.6 to 8.0, the light entering your camera will be halved. And if you change the ‘f-number’ from 8.0 to 4.0, the amount of light entering your camera will increase four-fold.
Is that all the ‘f-number’ does?
Not exactly. Altering the ‘f-number’ does have another impact on the end-photograph. It impacts your photograph’s ‘depth of field’ or ‘depth of focus’.
Before you shoot me your next question, let me tell you that we will be discussing ‘depth of field’ in another post.
Read More about this topic here and here.
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