This page is dedicated just for Aperture. Here I'm uploading my images and experimentations with different aperture settings and different types of lenses ( different focal lengths). On this page I'm also writing about my own thoughts and impressions about visual aspects of depth of field. (e.g. what depth of field would be appropriate for landscapes/portraits)
Aperture - most simply is ‘the size of the opening in the lens when a picture is taken.’
Pentacon 50mm lens, f1.8
When you hit the shutter release button of your camera a hole opens up that allows your cameras image sensor to catch a glimpse of the scene you’re wanting to capture. The aperture that you set impacts the size of that hole. The larger the hole the more light that gets in – the smaller the hole the less light.
Aperture is measured in ‘f-stops’. You’ll often see them referred to here at Digital Photography School as f/number – for example f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6,f/8,f/22 etc. Moving from one f-stop to the next doubles or halves the size of the amount of opening in your lens (and the amount of light getting through). Keep in mind that a change in shutter speed from one stop to the next doubles or halves the amount of light that gets in also – this means if you increase one and decrease the other you let the same amount of light in – very handy to keep in mind).
Aperture has a big impact upon depth of field. Large aperture will decrease depth of field while small aperture (larger numbers) will give you larger depth of field.
Assignment 1:
Experiment by taking a series of photographs of the same subject with different apertures.
This is my experimentation with different apertures. Smaller hole of the aperture decreases the amount of light which gets to a sensor so every time I increased the value of 'f-stops- I had to set longer exposure.
f- 5.3, 1/6s, ISO 160, 46mm
f- 10, 2s, ISO 160, 46mm
f- 20, 8s, ISO 160, 46mm
f- 36, 20s, ISO 160, 46mm
We can see how the depth of field changes in relation between the camera and the guitar behind it by increasing the aperture value. Also in last photograph colours became much more vivid and saturated because of the long time exposure. I used ISO 160 to get best quality of an image.
Assignment 2:
Take a series of shots which demonstrate your understanding of a 'large depth of field'.
Here, are my landscape shots with relatively large depth of field where I wanted everything to be in focus. In order to achieve this I had to increase the aperture number.
f-7.1, 1/200 ISO100, 10mm
I found this old, dilapidated truck when I was on one of my outdoor sessions. I thought it was quite interesting subject to photograph due its strong rust texture. I decided to use my wide angle lens to create a dynamic shot and to enhance this a little bit 'dangerous' look of this truck.
f-13, 1/80 ISO100, 10mm
Here I set the aperture to f-13 because I wanted to have the beginning of the windmill up to its wings in focus. I added relatively strong vignette to catch the viewers' eyes on the triangle shape of the windmill which creates nice symmetry.
When we stop thinking that it's a windmill this triangle creates an illusion of an abstract, metal pyramid.
f-18, 1/200 ISO 200, 18mm
I am very pleased with this photograph and the weather was very generous this day. I love this 'God's fingers' coming out of the sky. I slightly enhanced the blue tones on the top part of an image to create a contrast between this clear,blue sky and heavy sunset clouds. Also I added some stars in top right corner just to add a little bit of charm and surrealism to the image.
f-16, 1/200 ISO100, 35mm
One of the main reasons why I like this photograph is a natural frame created by trees. These warm, autumn colours create very nice, calm atmosphere and make this image look a little bit like a painting. I set the aperture to f16 to get in focus this nice natural frame and trees that were far away from me.
f-11, 1/400 ISO100, 10mm
I took this photograph at the day as the one above. I like the symmetry created by the bridge and the fact that the clouds on the left side are like a counterpoise in relation to the tree on the right side.
f16, 1/250 ISO100, 55mm
Balconies of an old tenement.
Assignment 3:
Take a series of shots in which you differentiate between the foreground and background in order to create a sense of visual hierarchy.
Kodak 200 film, f-2, 1/60
I took this photograph with my 'Praktica' analogue camera. I love analogue quality and here we can see a great, shallow depth of field achieved with 50mm f-2 Pentacon lens. I was relatively close to the subject and this caused the background to blur completely.
f-5.6, 1/200 ISO200, 55mm
I took this spontaneous shoot when I went for a walk with my camera. I saw this couple throughout the prism of these lovely autumn leaves and I decided to capture this charming moment.
f-1.8 1/60 ISO320, 50mm
Here I used my 50mm manual prime lens mounted on my Nikon D90. Large aperture (1.8) creates amazing differentiation between the foreground and the second camera in the background.
f-6.3, 1/1000 ISO400, 300mm
Here I used a different technique to get the depth of field. Instead of getting closer to my subject I increased the focal length by using a telephoto lens. Increasing the focal length narrows the depth of field. I had to set very short exposure time to avoid any motion blur when holding my 300mm telephoto lens so I increased ISO to 400 and set the aperture to 6.3 which still gave me relatively shallow depth of field.
Here I created a simple graph showing how different focal lengths influences the depth of field. Here I used my 300mm Sigma telephoto lens and two porcelain figurines.
We can see that bigger focal length creates much narrower depth of field. As we zoom out from our subject the depth of field becomes much deeper.
In my opinion analogue lenses are prefect for shallow depth of field. Nowadays it's quite common to use analogue lenses for video recording due their large aperture and good quality of an image. Here I decided to create a short,simple movie showing comparison between analogue pentacon f1.8 lens and digital nikkon f5.6.
The video has extremely low quality so my blog page loads quickly Also it took me about 5 minutes to create this video and as a result of that it is quite chaotic. I will try to make another video which will be much better than this one next time.
f2 1/250 ISO200
Another two images showing differentiation between foreground and background. I set very shallow depth of field of f 2.
'Shallow depth of field'
*Shallow depth of field means that a small portion of the picture is in focus. This is usually accomplished by using large apertures or long focal lengths.
f2 1/60s ISO200 50mm
f5.6 1/320 ISO 300mm
*The image above is an example of achieving shallow depth of field with the long focal length (300mm).
