A Brief Introduction to Aperture

The operations manager at G&G Duct Cleaning, John Gandolfo oversees all service personnel and handles project management duties. He joined the company after earning a bachelor of arts degree from Tulane University and has been responsible for increasing gross earnings by 20 percent annually since 2015. In his free time, Tulane graduate John Gandolfo enjoys photography.

Aperture, one of the essential components of photography, refers to the opening in the lens that allows light to travel into the body of the camera. For many people, it’s easiest to think of aperture in relation to one’s own eye. As a person moves from dark to bright environments, their iris shrinks or expands to control how much light passes into the eye. The iris, in this case, it sort of like the aperture on a camera.

When the aperture is open, the brightness, or exposure, of an image is higher. Similar to how the iris opens more in low-light settings, photographers also use larger apertures in low-light environments to ensure the camera captures as much light as possible. However, in bright settings, the aperture should be a smaller size so the image doesn’t become too whitewashed.

Aperture also affects the depth of field on a photograph. Images with a shallow depth of field have an out-of-focus background. They result from a large aperture and are common when shooting portraits. Landscape and architectural photos typically have a small aperture to ensure the background is not very blurred.

Photographers don’t usually discuss aperture in terms of large and small, so it’s important to understand how aperture is measured. Typically, it’s measured using an f-stop or f-number. When the number is higher, the aperture is smaller. For example, an aperture of f/8 is quite small while an aperture of f/1.4 is large.