After writing about the importance of ISO and shutter speed, we finally arrived to the third pillar of settings, which is the aperture! With this three article, we should understand the relation of this three settings, and how they are working!
THE RELATION BETWEEN ISO, SHUTTER SPEED AND APERTURE
WHAT IS APERTURE?
Aperture is the setting, which controls, how much your camera lens is opened or closed. It is either widen the opening or narrow it down, depends on the value of the aperture!
As a result, you will be able to actually control with this that, how much light can enter into your camera. With the Aperture Priority mode on your camera, you can adjust this manually!
THE VALUES OF APERTURE
The value is given with f-numbers, like f/2, f/4 and so on. Between the numbers and the state of the opening has an inverse relation, it means, that as we increase the f-number, the opening will narrow down.
Usually the maximum aperture is f/1.4(widest opening), and the minimum is f/22(smallest opening or most narrow).
WHAT IS THE INFLUENCE OF APERTURE ON YOUR FINAL IMAGE?
A higher aperture(smaller opening) will result a larger depth of field(larger area of focus), till the smaller aperture will result a smaller depth of field.
WHAT IS DEPTH OF FIELD?
To be completely honest, when I studied aperture, it wasn’t that straightforward for me, what is exactly depth of field. In case someone else is struggling with it also, I will try to explain it as simple as I can!
Depth of field refers to the distance between the closest and the farthest objects in a photo that appears acceptably sharp. Generally, a large aperture results in a large amount of foreground and background blur, yielding shallow depth of field. On the other hand, a small aperture results in small amount of foreground and background blur, yielding wide depth of field.
CHOOSING THE “RIGHT” APERTURE FOR WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHY
There are a lot of opinions existing regarding the right aperture for wildlife photography, however, like a lot of other things in photography, it can be very subjective. I will try to give some basic guidelines here, but I encourage everybody to practice, and try out what is working for them and what is not.
Now, with fast-moving animals, in order to capture them properly with your camera, generally speaking you will need wider aperture. It can also provide a really diffused background!
What is often missed and overlooked about using a wide aperture though, is the issue of key elements of an animal’s body being out of focus due to the shallow depth of field.
To understand this, I will try to give you an example here. Imagine, we want to photograph a bird, for a portrait. We are focusing on the eyes, which will be really sharp, however the beak will be out of focus. It is because the depth of field is too small, therefore using a smaller aperture in this case would result a better image! With portraits, it is important, that the whole head is sharp, so choose the correct aperture setting carefully knowing this!
Also, keep in mind, that the closer your subject to the camera, the smaller the depth of field will be!
When we are preparing our camera settings, we should start from the widest aperture possible, and adjust from there, if we need for our wildlife photography!
WHEN WE SHOULD USE APERTURE PRIORITY MODE?
Now, generally speaking, the best time using aperture priority mode, if we one, not really familiar with our camera settings yet, or two, we are photographing in a really fast-changing environment, in terms of lighting!
Aperture priority is a good choice, when you are capturing birds flying around with your camera.
COMBINING THE THREE PILLAR SETTINGS TOGETHER
Now, lot of camera is coming with Auto Mode, where the camera will set up the ISO, shutter speed and the aperture automatically. In order to photograph wildlife on a higher level, we should know how to adjust these settings in relation with each other.
Whenever you press your shutter button, the light will enter into your camera, then it goes through the aperture hole. Once the light goes past the lens aperture, it then hits the shutter curtain, which is like a window that is closed at all times, but opens when needed. The shutter then opens in a matter of milliseconds, letting the light hit the camera sensor for a specified amount of time. Now, after this, the sensor gathers the light, and your ISO brightens the image if necessary (it will also result grainy and lower quality images sometimes, so be careful). Then the shutter closes and the light is completely blocked from reaching the camera sensor.
In bright conditions when lots of light can enter in the lens, with a very small lens aperture, we would need more time, i.e. longer shutter speed for the sensor to gather enough light to produce a properly exposed image.
What would happen if the lens aperture/hole was very big? Obviously, a lot more light would hit the sensor, so we would need a much shorter shutter speed for the image to get properly exposed.
These are just a few examples, obviously a lot more scenario exists, this is the beauty of wildlife photography! In nature, with many different environment and animals, we will find ourselves in so many different situations, we should make sure we are prepared and ready!
CONCLUSION
If you read the first and the second part, you should start to see the relations between the settings. With the guidelines I am sharing here and the necessary practice, we should be able to develop with our wildlife photography in a short period of time!
Just knowing this three settings will increase your chances for better images, mastering them is essential in order to become a good wildlife photographer. Obviously, on your journey, you will find your best settings, which works best for you and with you.
Experiment if you would like, feel free to try out different options, with keeping the basic knowledge in mind!
I hope I could help with this article, if you wanted to know more about aperture, or you are new in wildlife photography! Enjoy!
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Wildlife of the Planet 