Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Wednesday Word of the day!

A new year, brings new things. And one new thing at fStop is the Wednesday Word of the day.

So what better word to start with, than the word that started it all.

fStop.

Aperture or what is sometimes called fStop is one of the more confusing parts of how cameras work, so let's make it easy.

Aperture settings are expressed as decimal numbers, and works opposite to the way you’d think – a higher number lets in less light than a lower number. In between it is what is known as the f-stops, or aperture settings – numbers like f1.6, f2.2, f8.0, f16.0, with many in between. Different lenses can f-stop settings example
have different apertures – for example, a cheaper lens may only open to f4.0, not letting in as much light as a more expensive lens that will open to f1.4.

Changes to aperture will effect depth of field, which is why most people want to learn it first. Do you want your background to be blurry and the person to be in focus? This is depth of field. The smaller the fStop, the more blurry the background.

So if you have a really expensive lens (f/1.4) and you shoot your child in front of some trees, he or she will be in focus and the trees will be really blurry. Most likely some of their face will be out of focus as well, since it is such a high aperture.

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