Aperture

 

Aperture

A camera’s aperture operates in much the same way your eye’s iris works. In the example above, if you looked skyward on a sunny day, your iris would automatically start to contract leaving your pupil looking much smaller. And if you get out of bed in the middle of the night without turning on any lights, your iris would open wide to let what little available ambient light into your pupil so you could see better in the dark. This is the same with your DSLR camera.

So with landscape photography, which depth of field do you normally want?

 

Well, that depends on what you’re photographing. If you’re trying to get everything n focus from forrground to background, you’ll want to use a smaller aperture (higher f-stop number) like f/11 – f/22. But if you’re trying to isolate the petals of a flower, you’ll want to use a wider aperture (lower f-stop number) like f/5.6 – f/1.8.