Aperture Assignment

The purpose of this assignment is to help you understand how changing aperture will change the look of your photos.

Aperture is measured in f-stops. It is the number with an F in front of it on your camera. The lower the number, the more light is let in when you take a picture. As the number gets larger, the size of the opening to let in light to the camera gets smaller.

Small F number = more light, fewer things in focus, blurry background.





Large F number = less light, more things in focus including background.



My backyard looks way better blurry!

Tip: With a low aperture your photos may be overexposed or washed out if there is a lot of light. With a high aperture, photos may turn out darker or underexposed. Compensate by setting your exposure (+/- button) a little higher or lower as needed.


Small aperture is preferable in portrait photography. The blurry background brings the attention to the subject of your picture.

Large aperture is preferable for landscape photography or if you're taking a group photo where people are at different distances from the camera (some sitting with others standing behind). If you want all the faces to be in focus, you have to use a larger aperture.

Use your aperture priority setting (A or Av) and let the camera automatically select the shutter speed for practice.
Here are some websites with good information:
The Pioneer Woman

Digital Photography School

If you have a point and shoot camera:
Check your manual settings and see if you can control the aperture.

I have a very old point and shoot and have no way to control those settings. I tried out a few things and here is what I got:
I took this picture on portrait setting. The background is not very blurry but it is also not crisp. Having your subject stand far from the background and you stand close to them helps.

(they dressed themselves today and yes, they are both wearing christmas shirts. Funny kids)

This was taken with the macro setting. You can do people with macro but you have to be totally in their face to make it work. It makes a nice blurry background though.


If you have a good zoom on your point and shoot, try standing far back and zooming in to the maximum. That may blur the background nicely. It didn't really work with my point and shoot but I only have a 3x zoom.