Camera Aperture

I can always rely on Holly to have something entertaining to do in the middle of the work day. Today we went on a photo adventure, and I learned about something I wish I'd learned about a long time ago!

If you are using a slightly fancy digital camera, you should have an "A" setting. This is for Aperture. Try playing with it! You can adjust it low (un-intuitively this means a big number). Low would be like 16 or so. This is going to make your pictures very very detailed. It gives the camera a long "depth of field" so that a lot of your background is in focus. I really like taking photos with a high (un-intuitively this means a low number) aperture. On my camera that's about 4.5. The bigger the lense, the higher the aperture can be. This will make only one object super in focus and everything else blurred.

Recap:

Everything in focus = high number, low aperture

Just one object in focus, everything else blurred = low number, high aperture

Those 2 scenarios play out like this:

Mom and I are in focus, the fountain's in focus, the people to our left are in focus, and even the tulips are mostly in focus.

Here only one dogwood flower is really in focus, causing your eye to be drawn just to that one blossom.

I'd love to hear any of your photography hints!