Before you start messing with the settings on an expensive camera (any camera for that matter) it helps to learn what those settings mean. In previous blogs, I have mentioned what photography is and means to me and some techniques such as aperture size and exposure (known as F-stop and ISO).
As one may have guessed from the title, today we will talk about F-stop; aperture size. If you look at the two photos above, you can see the difference in focuses. The picture on the left captures detail about every speck of light in the view of the camera, some cameras even have an infinity focus to be able to take clearer photos of the night sky. On the other hand, the picture on the left focuses only on the talent’s face and parts of her hair, it almost cuts out of focus by the time your eyes reach her shoulder.
This contrast in focus is not from where you tap on your iPhone or where you twist your lens to focus on your DSLR camera (digital camera). The effect comes from a setting known as the F-stop.
F-stop is the size of your aperture or how much light is being let into the camera. These numbers come in inverses, which can be confusing. For example, an f-stop of f/8 means the shutters are open 1/8 of the size of the lens. The bigger the f-stop, the smaller the aperture size, the less light that comes in.
Similar to how changing the ISO changes the quality of the photo. Changing the F-stop also changes the Depth of Field. As a quick explanation of Depth of Field (DOF), it is simply how much of an area is in focus to your camera lens. A larger f-stop (smaller aperture size) gives us a deeper depth of field. If the DOF is deep, then more of the image is in focus, very similar to the picture of the stars from the beginning. If the DOF is shallower, then less of the object or talent is in focus, like our portrait photo of the girl on the right.
To most of you, you don’t have a camera that can handle a change in F-stop, but that does not mean it hurts to understand it. The truth is, all cameras have an f-stop. For example, the iPhone 8 has an f-stop of 1.8, which explains why you can zoom in on a photo taken on an iPhone and still see a lot of details in the background.
To bring this to a close, I gave a lot of information but it is all easy to understand. The f-stop changes how much light and how much of the image the camera can focus on and interpret. Depending on the photo you want to take, the change in the f-stop can help the photo tell a better story. If you cannot change the f-stop of the camera (like on an iPhone), my first two blogs should provide some help on how to adjust for it. I hope this helps, and I hope it inspires you to go out and focus on what YOU want to see.
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– Michael Magnotti
Part-time writer, Michael Magnotti, thrives on leading passionate people to see the world in different ways. Although Michael writes about very different topics, he uses them all as an easy-to-read guide for seeing what you didn’t know was there!
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While the only camera I own is an iPhone 6s, I always find your post very informative and intriguing as each post I learn something new. In the future I hope to try a little photography and these tips will help immensely!