For example, if your subject is standing far away, you might not be able to reach the subject with your flash. Small apertures like f/11 and f/16 give you such a large depth of field that you may accidentally include elements that you don’t want to be in focus! A large depth of field is represented by a large number, like f22. Basically speaking, the aperture is an adjustable hole in the lens, through which light travels into the camera body. Then set your shutter speed to the number you wrote down (in our example it is 125) and keep your ISO the same – 200. Most likely, you have noticed this on your camera before. Don't point a cloth-shutter non-SLR camera, such as a Leica, toward the sun, except perhaps briefly to take a picture handheld, and even then only with a small aperture set.

Here are the steps: If your lens has extreme levels of focus shift, you’ll want to compensate for it: When it comes down to it, focus shift is just another type of lens aberration. When the manufacturer fixes one problem, another tends to appear.

It is expressed as an f-number (written as “f/” followed by a number), such as f/1.4, f/2, f/2.8, /f4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16, f/22, or f/32.

It's one of the three key settings of exposure (ISO, shutter speed, aperture). Axial chromatic aberration, for example – color fringes near the edges of your frame – often work that way. Do not move your camera and keep pointing at the same subject! For example, f1.4 is a small number and will give you a small depth of field.

Anyway in mys opinion, the simplest way of explaining Aperture will be not to speak about the “hole” but to tell it as the “width of the blades”; like a low aperture means the blade width is low so the hole is big, thus more light and a high aperture means the blade width is high the hole is small, thus low light. Practice in manual mode and play with the shutter, aperture and ISO.

As aperture changes in size, it alters the overall amount of light that reaches your camera sensor – and therefore the brightness of your image.

On the other hand, a small aperture results in a small amount of background blur, which is typically ideal for some types of photography such as landscape and architecture. This still gives a good picture, but does not take into account the look of the picture in terms of depth of field, movement and frozen frames. The most common effect that can be achieved by aperture adjustment is that of depth of field.

When you need a really fast shutter, keep an eye on the warning light in your viewfinder which indicates the shutter speed is cutting off too much light and the aperture range for that lens has been exceeded. Where were you hiding? The image below shows an aperture in a lens: Aperture can add dimension to your photos by controlling depth of field.

The increment value between F-Stops can be changed on many DSLR cameras. In most cases the beginner accepts the exposure set by the camera’s choice of shutter and aperture combinations. Also, if the camera's mode dial includes "M", "Tv", and "Av", it almost certainly has an actual diaphragm iris; this applies even on small compact models. Here’s a fun one. The mechanism of the aperture can be related back to the pupil of the human eye. With some zoom lenses, the maximum aperture will change as you zoom in and out. Very informative and interesting, solved many of my doubt’s in photography.

This is most noticeable at wide apertures because they are large.

Read more about Nasim here. If you want to find out more about this subject, we have a much more comprehensive article on f-stop that is worth checking out.