How to master the skills of comprehensive use of aperture

Lead: If you can control the aperture, you can completely control your camera. Aperture is one of the most critical factors in taking magical photos. Let me tell you how to use the aperture.

How to fully master the skills of using aperture? What is an aperture?

Simply put, what is the aperture? The size of the lens opening when shooting. ?

When you press the shutter on the camera, a hole will be opened so that the sensor can capture the light entering the camera. The aperture value you set will affect the opening size of this hole. The bigger the hole, the more light comes in. The smaller the hole, the less light comes in.

What is the aperture? f/？ Marked it. F/ values, such as f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/22 and so on, are often seen in photography tutorials. If you change the f/ value once, the size of the opening in the lens will be twice or half the current size, and the amount of light entering will be doubled or reduced by half.

One reason why beginners often confuse the aperture is that the smaller the number of f/, the larger the aperture (the more light enters), while the larger the number of f/, the smaller the aperture. So the f/2.8 aperture is larger than the f/22 aperture. Be sure not to get mixed up.

Depth of field and aperture

Changing the aperture will have many effects on shooting, the most significant of which is the depth of field.

Depth of field (DOF) refers to the clear part of a photo before and after the focal plane. A large depth of field means that most photos are clear regardless of the distance (for example, photos taken with f/22 aperture have very clear foreground and background).

Small (or shallow) depth of field means that only a part of the picture in the photo is clear and the other pictures are blurred.

Aperture plays an important role in depth of field. Large aperture (small f/ value) will reduce the depth of field, while small aperture (large f/ value) will increase the depth of field.

It may be a little confusing to see this for the first time, but the way I remember this is that a small f/ value equals a small depth of field, and a large f/ value equals a large depth of field.

The following photos illustrate the shallow depth of field effect:

This photo was taken with the aperture of f/ 1.8. Except for the first two flowers, the flowers in the back are blurred, and the flowers and leaves are separated from the background.

The best way to understand aperture is to take out your camera and do some exercises. Go out and find a scene, there are objects near you and objects far away from you, and take a group of photos with different apertures. You will soon see the influence and function of the aperture.

Different subjects need different depth of field.

For example, in most landscape photography, you will see the photographer choose a small aperture. This ensures that all still life from the foreground to the distant horizon is clear.

On the other hand, in portrait photography, it is easy to make the model clear and the background blurred by using the aperture, which can not only highlight the model, but also make other things not distract the audience. At this time, you should choose a large aperture to ensure a small depth of field.

Macro photographers tend to use a large aperture to ensure that the subject can catch the audience's full attention and ignore all other content.