#APERTURE 3.5 VS 2.8 MANUAL#
But don't worry if you don't own a very fast lens, or if you're shooting with a COOLPIX that doesn't have manual or aperture priority options. Fast prime lenses, such as the 50mm f/1.8D NIKKOR, are ideal. Bokeh is affected by the shape of the lens's diaphragm blades (the aperture), so a lens with more circular-shaped blades will have rounder, softer orbs of out-of-focus highlights, whereas a lens with an aperture that is more hexagonal in shape will create more hexagonal highlights.įor really good bokeh, you need to use as fast lens, with at least an f/2.8 aperture, and shoot as wide open as possible – around f/2, f/1.8 or f/1.4 is ideal. The way your lens renders the out-of-focus points of light with very shallow depth of field is called bokeh (pronounced boh-keh), from the Japanese boke, meaning blur or haze. In aperture priority, you select the aperture using the relevant command dial, and the camera sorts out the shutter speed in manual, you can choose both the aperture and the shutter speed with the command dial.
#APERTURE 3.5 VS 2.8 FULL#
While you can use program (P) mode to do this in a limited way, you'll only get full control with aperture priority mode (A) or manual (M). To control depth of field, you need to choose the appropriate lens aperture, which means using a shooting mode that gives you control over the aperture. A lens is said to be 'fast' if its maximum aperture is a very small number – usually f/1.2 to f/4 – as that means it will open very wide, letting in lots of light and enabling faster shutter speeds in lower light conditions. f/3.5-5.6 or 1:3.5-5.6, where '3.5' and '5.6' refer to the maximum aperture for the short and long ends of the zoom range respectively. The smaller the f-number, the larger the aperture, allowing more light through to hit the sensor, while the higher f-numbers mean a smaller aperture, allowing less light through.Īll lenses have a maximum aperture, and on a NIKKOR lens you'll see this inscribed on the barrel e.g. The aperture is the opening in the lens's diaphragm through which light passes. But the key thing to remember is that the lower your f-number, the less depth of field and the blurrier the background the higher the f-number, the greater the depth of field and therefore the sharper the background. Another is how close you are to your subject. One is your camera's sensor – an FX (full-frame) sensor will give you a shallower depth of field than a DX sensor at any given aperture. There are a few other parts to the equation. You control the depth of field by altering the lens aperture. With shallow depth of field, only a narrow section of the image looks sharp and everything else is blurred, while wide depth of field keeps everything in the picture acceptably sharp from front to back. Either way, what you're doing is playing around with depth of field.ĭepth of field is the zone of acceptable sharpness around the point you choose to focus your image – how sharp or blurred are the areas behind and in front of your subject. Do you want only part of your shot to be in focus, or all of it? If it's a landscape, 'all' is most likely your answer, but for portraits and wildlife, you might prefer to lose a distracting background.