Photography: Aperture settings

This isn't a very good picture, but it demonstrates what I want to say.

There is a post on the left that is out of focus and the birdhouse and tree are in focus. The depth of field is quite narrow.

[breakout title="Mike Maynard" align="right"]Mike is a photographer and blogger, and key contributor to the Express & Star's Star Witness section! He runs two blogs of his own Mike10613 and A Zillion Ideas.[/breakout]

As you go away from the optimal distance from the camera things get blurred, but our subject is in sharp focus.

To get this effect choose a wide aperture. I used a 55 – 300 mm lens to shoot this from a distance away.

Use a wide aperture for shots like this too, notice the top right corner is farther away and so out of focus, but our subject is in sharp focus.

This is with a narrow aperture on a sunny day. My subject is the tram and the focus is quite good, but it blurs slightly at longer distance and shorter distance, but you can still see detail even at short distances. Use narrow apertures for landscape shots. I used F/16 for this shot.

I focused on the centre of the tram with this shot and still used a narrow aperture, but not quite as narrow. I think it was F/12. The trees in the distance are blurred and the right side of the image that is close up is blurred too. My subject is quite good though and that's important.

I took this photo the same day, but I didn't set the white balance properly and it had a blue tint, so I did an artistic edit and made it sepia.

On my Nikon D3200, the basic settings are down the side of the screen and along the bottom. It's a good idea to check them all in turn before you start the shoot and then all you have left are ISO, aperture and shutter speed to worry about. If you use aperture priority, you can just set that and leave the camera to automatically correct the ISO and shutter speed.

You don't need an expensive camera to get good pictures, but it helps if you understand the depth of field, aperture settings and shutter speeds.

You can view the original post on Mike's blog A Zillion Ideas here.