What Is Aperture? Let's Talk About Aperture!

For those who have shown some interest in photography , you all have heard this term before or will be hearing about this word quite often. Just like everything in this world, there are specific terms being used to describe specific things or processes about specific items. This is one of those specific terms that is very important to know about when you are beginning your journey in the world of photography, and I mean thoroughly knowing it and understanding it.

APERTURE. This word is used for the size of the opening inside a lens.

I want you to get familiarized with a few things before you get into aperture. A single photographic lens contains many glasses inside to bend and deliver light to where your film sits or digital sensor is located, and this is where aperture plays an important part. When you see a person's eye on a very bright day, you can see that pupil in the eye is pretty small. It is because the eye is restricting too much light from getting onto nerve sensors in the eye. Otherwise, everything will seem pretty much all white.

Aperture plays that same role as pupil. Just like pupil expands and contracts, aperture opens and closes to control the amount of light hitting film or digital sensor inside a camera. Aperture is made possible by blades inside a lens. You have seen 007 movie where James Bond is pointing his gun at a hole where the hole was changing in size by blades opening and closing. This is the exact mechanism that is used by all photography and videography lenses. By controlling the opening on a lens, you can control the amount of light going through a lens.

Many beginners are confused because F-Stop numbers on a lens barrel are not represented the way beginners expect. It is because the numbers represent the opposite to what the beginners expect. We were all educated with a higher number representing larger amount or bigger size. But with aperture, it is the opposite. Higher the F-Stop number, smaller the amount of light traveling through a lens due to a smaller opening.

When you see a lens, most of older lens will have number on the side where you mount a lens to a camera. The numbers represent between these values f1, f1.4, f2, f2.8, f4, or f5.6, f8, f11,f16,f22, f32, f45, f64, f90, f128, and so on. It is here where aperture and F-Stop numbers are related. F-Stop numbers on a lens represents the diameter of a hole or aperture on a lens. If you think the day is too bright, then decrease the diameter of the hole by increasing the F-Stop number. If you think the day is too dark, then increase the diameter of the hole by decreasing the F-Stop number. Again, when you decrease the F-Stop number on a lens, you are increasing the diameter size of aperture which allows more light to travel through a lens. When you increase the F-Stop number on a lens, you are decreasing the diameter size of aperture which allows less light to travel through a lens. Diameter of aperture will open up or down according to F-Stop numbers on a lens. To make things simple, f2.8 will open up aperture and f22 will close down aperture.

There is a lens that start from f1. This f1 number represent geometric amount of light traveling through the lens. The f1 means basically 1:1 ratio of the outside lighting to inside the camera lighting, or light amount film or digital sensors are getting. The next f1.4 means 1:1.4, a halving of the area of aperture diameter of f1 which result in a half the amount of light traveling through a lens. The f2.8 is a half of f1.4, which means a quarter of f1. These F-Stop numbers are derived from factors of square root. That is the basic break down of the numbers.

With the modern lens and camera, F-Stop can go down by thirds where we started to see f3.2, f3.5, f4.5, f5, f6.3, f7.1, f9, f10, and so on instead of going down in halves. This helps us to achieve more accurate exposure value for our images. Regarding the detail information about F-Stop and other things, I will explain them in the future.

I hope this helped some new people closer to photography. As a review, what is an aperture? The opening in the lens! You can revisit this blogger to get additional information in the future quest for photography.