Learning Photography - The Basics of Aperture

In this beginner-friendly photography tutorial, we dive deep into aperture — one of the most important and creative controls on your camera. Learn exactly how aperture works, what those f-numbers mean (f/2, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, etc.), and how changing the aperture gives you powerful control over depth of field.

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You'll discover:

Why smaller numbers = bigger lens opening (more light + blurrier background)
How to shoot in Aperture Priority mode
The creative difference between wide apertures (dreamy, isolated subjects) and narrow apertures (sharp landscapes)
Real side-by-side examples showing the same shot at different f-stops
When to use each setting for portraits, landscapes, and more

Perfect for beginners who want to move beyond Auto mode and start creating better photos.
Recommended Gear:

A 50mm prime lens is mentioned as an excellent budget option for achieving beautiful background blur.

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction to Aperture
00:15 Quick Review of Camera Basics
01:05 Setting Up Aperture Priority (Auto ISO)
01:37 Understanding f-stops & Full Stops
03:23 Side-by-Side Aperture Comparison
03:39 f/4 Example
04:11 f/5.6 Example
04:37 f/8 Example
04:54 f/2.8 & f/2 Examples (Maximum Blur)
05:58 Creative Applications (Landscapes vs Portraits)
06:50 Experiment & Practice Tips
07:21 Kit Lens Limitations & 50mm Lens Recommendation

If you're just starting out with photography, understanding aperture is one of the best first steps you can take.

Drop a comment with your favorite aperture setting or what type of photography you're into!

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Thanks for watching!

#photographyforbeginners  #CameraSetup #FirstCamera #MirrorlessTutorial #DSLRTutorial #ExposureTriangle #AperturePriority #Basicsofphotography #BeginnerPhotography #PhotographyTips #MikeKovaliv

Transcript

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In this video, we're going to dig a little bit deeper into what aperture is and how you might want to use it in your photography. In the last video, we went over the three kind of basics of what makes a camera work: aperture, shutter speed, and sensitivity or ISO settings. And we set the camera up so you'd be basically shooting in aperture priority mode. And as a quick review, that just really means that the other two settings, the shutter speed and the ISO, should be handled by the camera. And we're going to focus on just what the aperture setting is and changing that a little bit to see what difference that makes to your image. There's a couple of good reasons why I selected aperture to be the first main setting that we focus on in these tutorials. I think aperture is probably one of the easiest to understand. And also I think that it can give us one of the uh the most flexible looks in our images as to how we want our image to look. It gives us kind of a great control over what we're actually focusing on. So, in order for this to work properly, I would take a quick peek at your camera, either if there's a dial or if you want to do it through the menu setting, to find your ISO setting. And what we're gonna do is look through and actually make sure that that is set to auto ISO. We're gonna let the camera handle the setting. We don't want to worry about that or the shutter speed at this point, just the aperture setting. So there's gonna be a series of numbers on the lens, and as you turn the dial or press the buttons on your specific camera to change the aperture setting, like we talked about in the last video, the numbers that you're gonna see, either on your display or on the lens itself, are going to represent essentially the size of that opening. And photography likes to keep things interesting. So what they're gonna do is it's going to be reversed. The smaller the number, the larger the hole or the opening on the camera. And the larger the number, the smaller the hole is going to get. So what those numbers represent is essentially a ratio of either most things go by doubles in photography, so they either get twice as big, twice as fast, or half as big or half as fast. Those are what are called full stops. And that just basically is a system of measurement, again, that makes it easy for us to understand. So that's what we're gonna start with. We're not gonna break it down any smaller than that at this point. We're gonna talk about what's called full stops. So if we've set up everything correctly to this point, we should be pretty safe to take a photograph and get pretty decent results. Your mileage might vary depending on your camera, but in a relatively well-lit room or if you're outside, you should get a very, you know, close to what you see, what we call exposure or the overall brightness of the image should be fairly close to what you see with your own eye. So if you take a picture and press the play button to take a look at it on your camera, with everything safely set right now, we should get a pretty decent image. One of the best ways to quickly see how the aperture can affect our photograph is to take the same photograph with different settings. We're gonna leave everything the same. We're gonna stand in the same place, our subject is gonna be in the same place, so nothing is going to change other than I'm going to open and close the aperture or change the number on the lens and take the same photograph and look at the results. So in this first photograph, the aperture is set to F4, which, as we discussed, is a pretty safe place to start on most cameras. So if we take a look at this image, what we're gonna see is that our subject is nicely in focus and the background is slightly blurry, but you know, it has a nice kind of look to it. So what we're gonna do is change the aperture from f4 and we're gonna increase the number to f5.6, which is going to decrease the amount of light, but the camera will compensate because it's uh dealing with all of our settings for us. But it's gonna change how much of our subject is in focus. So if we take the same image at f5.6 and take a look at the photograph, if we look at the background, we'll see that it's not quite as blurry as it was in the F4 photograph. And if we repeat this process and set our aperture to F8, take the photograph again, we'll see that the background is even sharper. There's even less blurriness to it. So let's take a look at the reverse now. If we go back to our F4 image and take a look at that, and take a look at the background to see how it is in focus relative to our subject. And then we'll change the lens to f2.8, which is one stop or one full size higher than F4, and take the same photograph. What we should see now is that the background is even more out of focus. So if your lens is capable, we'll go even one step higher and we're gonna set it to F2. And as you'll see in this image, the background is even more blurry and the photograph has that more dreamy look. So this is one of the main effects that aperture has. It has to do with how much of your image is in focus and how much of your background is in focus. There is another thing that changes this ratio of sharpness to your subject to the blurriness of the background, and that has to do with how far away you are from your subject. And we're not going to talk about that so much today. I really wanted to keep this simple and let you see the physical effect of how changing that setting on your aperture will generally affect your image and why you might want to use it. So, as you can imagine, there's some good reasons as to why you want to understand this setting first. And it has to do with the type of photography perhaps that you're doing or that you're interested in. If you're interested in landscape photography, for example, it makes a lot of sense to have a lot of your subject in focus. So generally, with landscape, you're going to use a much higher number or a very smaller aperture setting so that you're getting much more of your image in focus. Whereas if you're doing portrait photography or perhaps, you know, some special effect wetting photography where you want to have your subject really stand out and have that really dreamy look, you're going to want to use a very, very small aperture number or very, very wide opening of the lens. So you're going to isolate that subject and have a very blurry background. What I would recommend at this point is to go out and do some experimenting with the different aperture settings on your lens. Pick a subject and take the same photograph with a few different settings and see how it's going to change what's in focus and see how perhaps you can isolate the subject or get more in focus depending on what you're trying to achieve. This is something that I think can give you a lot of flexibility and give you an idea of why you might want to change those settings. One of the things that I'll mention is if you are using the kit lens that came with your camera, you might be limited to what you can do in this regard. A lot of those less expensive lenses only go down to a certain number, perhaps f4 or f3.5, which isn't going to give you the most out of focus that you might be looking for. In that case, I would recommend taking a look at my 50 millimeter lens video, which talks about a great budget lens that really is a great option for perhaps a first or second lens for your camera, as generally they open up very wide or the number goes very low, and that's going to give you that out of focus look or that very dreamy look that perhaps you're looking for. So that's a great option if your lens isn't capable of doing what we're talking about. Thanks very much for watching. My name is Mike Kovaliv. If you enjoyed the video, please give it a like and subscribe as it helps the channel out, and we'll see you in the next video.