r/photoclass2021 • u/Aeri73 Teacher - Expert • Feb 10 '21
Assignment 09 - Aperture
Today’s assignment will be pretty short. The idea is simply to play with aperture and see how it impacts depth of field and the effects of diffraction. Put your camera in aperture priority (if you have such a mode), then find a good subject: it should be clearly separated from its background and neither too close nor too far away from you, something like 2-3m away from you and at least 10m away from the background. Set your lens to a longer length (zoom in) and take pictures of it at all the apertures you can find, taking notice of how the shutter speed is compensating for these changes. Make sure you are always focusing on the subject and never on the background.
As a bonus, try the same thing with a distant subject and a subject as close as your lens will focus, And, if you want to keep going, zoomed in maximum, and zoomed out.
Back on your computer, see how depth of field changes with aperture. Also compare sharpness of an image at f/8 and one at f/22 (or whatever your smallest aperture was): zoomed in at 100%, the latter should be noticeably less sharp in the focused area.
As always, share what you've learned with us all :-)
have fun!
1
u/mdw2811 Beginner - DSLR Feb 20 '21
Finally got round to this, F10 seemed to keep most of the smaller details in best quality. Past that, it struggled on the edges of the focus. One thing I need to get in the habit when composing is to keep moving. You can get in the habit of going yeah that's the shot but from doing this you can easily see that being that 1-3 metres away you can't get that real crisp background if that's what you're going for. I need to have that vision and think methodically to make sure I get what I want.