Member-only story

A beginner’s guide to aperture

What’s the difference between f/1.4 and f/22?

Monica Galvan
UX Collective
4 min readSep 29, 2020

A beginner’s guide to aperture
Photo by Alex Andrews from Pexels

3 keys to photography

There are 3 key elements to photography: Aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. These are also known as the exposure triangle. Learning how to use these 3 features on your camera is the secret to creating better photos.

The exposure triangle: Aperture, shutter speed, and ISO
The exposure triangle (designed by Monica Galvan)

What is aperture?

Aperture, also known as an F-stop, is how large of an opening you let light through to your camera.

One-stop refers to doubling or halving the amount of light making up an exposure. Adding a stop of light by doubling the exposure will brighten an image. Decreasing by one stop or halving the exposure will darken an image.

The smaller the f-stop number (think f/1.4), the larger the aperture. Seems kind of backward right? This graphic will help you make the connection.

Aperture diagram from f/1.4 to f/16
Aperture diagram (designed by Monica Galvan)

So the next time you’re wondering which aperture to use in any given lighting situation just…

Create an account to read the full story.

The author made this story available to Medium members only.
If you’re new to Medium, create a new account to read this story on us.

Or, continue in mobile web

Already have an account? Sign in

Published in UX Collective

We believe designers are thinkers as much as they are makers. Curated stories on UX, Visual & Product Design. https://linktr.ee/uxc

Written by Monica Galvan

Designer + photographer living in San Francisco. I also make videos about design: https://bit.ly/MonicaOnYouTube

Responses (3)

What are your thoughts?

bokeh

Also called circles of confusion.

--

An important thing to note here is your aperture is entirely dependent on the type of lens you’re using.

Only the maximum aperture the beauty of aperture is that it is independent of the lens so f/8 on one lens gives the same exposure as f/8 on another lens as aperture is dependent on the length of the lens it is f/ for a reason.

--

An important thing to note here is your aperture is entirely dependent on the type of lens you’re using. This is why it’s important to invest in quality glass.

Not sure what you mean here. The quality of the glass does not have any impact on aperture. The aperture is just a variable hole formed by the aperture blades.
But the maximum available aperture on your lens has an impact on the price and weight of…

--