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What is Aperture in Photography? A Complete Guide

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Understanding Aperture in photography is understanding one of the fundamentals of how your camera works. It’s one of the three important points of the exposure triangle (along with shutter speed and ISO). By understanding Aperture, you’ll be well on your way to shooting perfect exposures and having maximum creative control over your images.

You don’t have to understand Aperture to take great photos. However, if you want to increase your chances of taking great images every time you head out with your camera, it certainly helps. The aperture is the hole in your lens that opens and closes to let light into the camera. It has a significant effect on both exposure and depth of field (DOF) in the image. However, it can be a little confusing at first and can often seem counterintuitive, particularly for new photographers.

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This crazy looking DIY camera gives the full frame FOV and DOF equivalent of a 35mm f/0.4

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You can’t beat a good DIY crazy camera and they don’t get much crazier than this. Built by Matt at DIY Perks, this particular camera features a 432mm f/5 episcope lens with an image projection circle of around 500mm in diameter. To give you some idea of scale, your average full-frame lens has an image projection circle with a diameter of at least 43mm. That’s an area of 0.015 square meters. This lens has an image circle of 0.785 square metres (~50x the size).

And with this huge projection also comes a big advantage when it comes to depth of field. Despite being a 432mm f/5 lens, it offers the equivalent field of view and depth of field as a 35mm lens would on a full-frame camera if it had a maximum aperture of f/0.4. The closest lens to this designed for the relatively small full-frame format is the Zeiss 50mm f/0.7, and the last one of those to sell was rumoured to fetch around $200,000.

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Medium format comes with a double-edged sword you need to know about before you buy

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Now that digital medium format is approaching and even beating high-end DSLRs and mirrorless cameras on price, more people are considering making the switch. One of the things to take into account, though, is that the larger you make your sensor, the shallower your depth of field becomes relative to your field of view.

In this video, Mark Denney talks about this problem for landscape photography since switching to the Fuji GFX 100S. He also busts a few of the myths that are typically touted as reasons against buying into medium-format that are no longer really relevant with as small as medium format cameras have started to become.

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Depth of Field explained using Lego figures

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If you’re just starting out with photography, the concept of depth of field is one of the first ones to learn. And in this video, you’ll see it explained in the comprehensive, but also the most fun possible way – with Lego figures. Four Bricks Tall helps you grasp the concept of depth of field in only three minutes so you can improve your storytelling in toy photography or any other genre.

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Does sensor size affect depth of field – the definitive answer

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In this video I’m going to put to rest this question once and for all, does sensor size affect depth of field? I’ll be physically taking pictures with a full frame camera and a micro 4/3 camera and showing you the visual difference in a range of aperture settings. There are lots of theories and opinions on this but here is the definitive answer.

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Depth of Field: the ultimate beginner’s guide to controlling depth of field using lens aperture in nature photography

If you are just starting out with photography, you’re learning about plenty of new concepts. Depth of field is one of them. Although it’s one of the essential elements to understand, it can be overwhelming if you’re completely new to it. Therefore, I have come up with the ultimate beginner’s guide to controlling depth of field with lens aperture. While I focus on nature photography, you’ll find this guide handy regardless of the genre you generally shoot. So, let’s get right into it!

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How to simulate large aperture depth of field outdoors in Photoshop with depth maps

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Recently we showed you a tutorial from Unmesh at PiXImperfect on using the Irix Blur tool in Photoshop to simulate a shallow depth of field in the studio. That technique can also be applied to headshots on location, too, but when you’ve got varying degrees of depth throughout your scene, with multiple planes at different levels of depth, it’s not the easiest to work with.

In this video, Colin Smith at photoshopCAFE shows us a different technique for simulating depth of field effects in Photoshop CC that solves that very problem. His technique allows you to easily blur different parts of the image by different amounts based on a depth map – which he also shows us how to make.

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How to create a realistic shallow depth of field effect in Photoshop

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Shooting with a shallow depth of field has become so popular in the last few years that it’s almost become a cliché. But it remains something that’s very much in demand. Fast f/1.4 and f/1.2 lenses can be extremely expensive, though, and so very difficult for people to achieve with their f/slow-slower kit lenses, especially if working with APS-C or Micro Four Thirds sensors.

In this video, Unmesh Dinda from PiXImperfect shows us a way to simulate shallow depth of field in Photoshop using the Iris Blur filter on a smart object, with a neat tip to offer a lot more control over the Iris Blur filter than you might’ve realised it offered.

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Apple makes a Bokeh commercial, uses “bokeh” as a verb and pronounces it wrong

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“Bokeh” is a Japanese word describing the aesthetic quality of the blur in out-of-focus areas of photos. And as we all know, it’s a noun. Well, Apple decided to play with language a bit in its latest ad and turn “bokeh” into a verb. Oh, and the ladies in the ad are pronouncing it wrong as well.

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Everything you need to know about depth of field in under 4 minutes

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Depth of field can be a somewhat confusing topic to get to grips with if you’re new to photography. That is to say, it’s easy to see what depth of field is, but it can be tricky to understand what elements can cause it to change, whether intentionally or by accident. In this video, photographer Kellan Reck takes a look at depth of field and explains the variables that can affect your depth of field.

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