A Beginner's Guide to Aperture in Photography

Aperture is one of the most fundamental and crucial parameters in photography, and having a complete mastery of it will give you greater technical and creative control of your images. This excellent video will introduce you to aperture, what it does, how it works, and how you can use it to make better photos.

Coming to you from Taylor Jackson, this excellent video will introduce you to aperture and how it controls both technical and creative aspects of your photos. Aperture is one of the three fundamental parameters in the exposure triangle, and together with shutter speed and ISO, it determines your overall exposure (you can read about the exposure triangle here). Beyond exposure, however, aperture allows you to control depth of field, which is one of the most powerful tools for isolating your subject and controlling where the viewer's eye focuses in your images. Depth of field is one of the first tools any photographer uses in crafting an image. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Jackson. 

And if you want to continue learning about photography, be sure to check out "Photography 101: How to Use Your Digital Camera and Edit Photos in Photoshop With Lee Morris!"

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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2 Comments

This guy doesn't care much about the beginners. Jokes, vague descriptions and jargon from the beginning that does not help to a complete beginner. "Minimum" apertures of 1.4... (maximum, right?), sunstars (is that the main point?), even before describing DoF.

Even worse, he confuses his followers:
"-- Sir what happen when lens on infinity focus and 1.4 aperture?
-- Then everything is in focus (assuming the lens is technically good) from the infinity distance and beyond"

Everything in focus? I guess the user is asking about the hyperfocal distance. What does the DoF of a lens focused at infinity have to to with the quality of the lens?

Videos such as these only help confusing and frustrating newcomers.

This was supposed to be a Beginner's Guide discussing the various aspects of the apertures but it involves plenty of technical terms which we cannot understand. Website https://youressayreviews.com/is-edubirdie-legit/ is helpful in reading authentic reviews. This video is clearly not for the beginners.