

A small number such as f / 1.8 means wide aperture, while a large number such as f / 22 means narrow aperture. How wide the aperture is specified in apertures or F-numbers such as F / 8. When the aperture is narrow, very little light enters the image. When the aperture is wide, a lot of light enters the image. The aperture changes the width of the lens aperture.Ī wide aperture is a large hole, while a narrow aperture is a small hole. The aperture is one of three different settings. The camera lens collects and focuses light – but how much light? It can open and close to change the amount of light. The aperture is a hole in the lens through which light enters the camera body.Īn aperture is like a “pupil” for a lens. For landscape photography, an aperture is one of the most important of them. For each genre of photography, there are special visual tools. In this article, I will talk about the best aperture for the landscape. By having the f/1.8 lens providing more choices of aperture for your purposes, you can control the DOF more, determining the degree of blur of the the background to make your main subject stand out from it, and render that background or foreground more or less recognizable, or appearing as sharp.Aperture What is Aperture in Photography? A reduced DOF can be desirable or not so, depending on the effect you wish. To make the whole scene appear sharp, you would need a smaller aperture to enhance DOF. You would thus have more shutter speeds available to completely freeze fast action, or allow some degree of blur to depict movement.Ī larger aperture, however, also reduces depth-of-field (DOF)- the portions within the frame which are foreground or background that will be seen as sharp or not sharp, appearing as in focus or de-focused. Every stop will double your shutter speed, so if your zoom lens is at f/5.6 maximum at 50mm, that means the 50mm f/1.8 lens is capable of delivering over 8 times the shutter speed under the same lighting conditions. A larger aperture lets in more light which corresponds to a faster shutter speed letting in less light as a balance for proper exposure.

So f/16 is getting to be quite small and at distance from f/5.6 or f/3.5 which is the zoom lens's maximum when zoomed to its shortest focal length (FL). What I don’t understand is if the lens maximum aperture is f5.6 what then happens if the camera is set to f16 or above.Keep in mind- what is there to confuse you is, that a smaller number means a larger aperture. If, on the other hand, you didn't want to change the exposure time, you could have also gone from ISO400 to ISO100. Sensitivity didn't change here, so I left it out of the equation. However, if you also halve the exposure time twice, first from 1/125 to 1/250 and then to 1/500, you reduce the amount of light your film/sensor receives by two stops, which means you counteract the overexposure by the same amount, and, again, get the correct exposure.
UNDERSTANDING F STOP FULL
f/2.8 is two full stops larger than f/5.6, so if you change from 5.6 to 2.8 you would overexpose by two stops. If you get a correct exposure with f/5.6 and 1/125s at ISO400, you get the exact same exposure with f/2.8 and 1/500s at ISO400. This means that you can easily calculate exposures with just one metering. Those are full f-stops, and correspond to full sensitivity steps: 25, 50, 100, 200, 400 etc. While you're at it, I recommend you also learn the f-stop scale by heart: 1.4, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22, 32. Photography 101: The difference between fixed and variable aperture | Photofocus Meaning, whether you’re zooming in or not, your aperture stays constant until you adjust it either within your camera. With a fixed aperture lens, the aperture functions independently from the focal length of the lens. Of course, this leads to higher-priced lenses, but the benefits are many-fold. These lenses come with some serious glass and mechanics packed inside. These lenses are heavier in comparison to their variable aperture brethren. The opposite is true of fixed aperture lenses. The downside here is the limitation of aperture choices, which affects not only depth-of-field but the range of exposure choices as well. They’re also great because they’re much more cost-effective. These lenses are typically lighter and are great travel options. Lenses with variable apertures mean that the aperture changes based on your focal length. So what is the difference between a fixed and a variable aperture in a zoom lens? Photography 101: The difference between fixed and variable aperture
