APERTURE

Fig 1

                                       

This exercise i focused on the camera set at different apertures to demonstrate depth of field. By standing right in front of a set of christmas trees arranged in a row in front of my house, i demonstrated depth of field. The picture in Fig 1 above was taken with this exif data: shutter speed 1/250s, aperture f 4.8, ISO 800 ,Focal length 75mm. This was the widest aperture obtained with shutter speed of 1/250 secs.As can be seen the fore ground is very sharp and the background is blurred.






Fig 2

Fig 2 shows the same picture taken at an aperture of f32 with depth of field being very sharp. Observe that the dark red shop is visible in this picture as compared to fig 1 where it is blurred due to the shallow depth of field.

Fig 3

The picture in Fig 3 was taken with the aperture stopped down to f13 and exposure time or shutter speed of 1/30s.   This has rendered the fore ground sharp and mid and background slightly out of focus but not as much as in figure 1.

Bryan Peterson in his book understanding exposures says the three components of exposure ;ISO,shutter speed and aperture can be broken down to get seven different types of exposure and its either the aperture or shutter speed most often behind the success of a creative exposure. Small apertures (f16,f22,f32) he calls storytelling exposures that show great depth of field while larger apertures (f2.8 f/4 f5.6) are the creative forces behind singular theme or isolation exposures. The middle of the ground apertures f/8 and f/11 are apertures in which depth of field is of no concern.

This i tried to visualise myself. If i close my eyes slightly, i observe that the object closer to me is sharper than that further away from me. Thats aperture!