Understanding Aperture in photography

Photographygoals.com

what is aperture

Aperture refers to the opening in your lens that controls how much light gets through the lens to the camera's sensor.

On Your Camera

On your camera, Aperture is represented by an f-stop that looks like this...f/1.8, f/5.6, f/12, etc. 

How It Works

When you adjust the aperture setting on your camera, the opening in the lens will adjust in size to control how much light gets in. 

Exposure Effects

A larger aperture (smaller number) will let more light into the camera and brighten your image.  A smaller aperture (larger number) will let less light into the camera and darken your image. 

Visual Effects

A larger aperture will make the depth of focus smaller (for blurry backgrounds) .  A smaller aperture will make the depth of focus larger (for sharper images front to back). 

Using Aperture

Aperture is the setting you should set first in many cases because it always affects the visual appearance of the image.  (If there's movement in the image you may want to consider starting with shutter speed). 

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