What is aperture?

I have included in earlier posts a very brief description of what aperture is and want to expound based on a question I got on facebook. As you can see from these images the aperture refers to the size of the hole letting light into your camera. The larger the f-stop, the smaller the hole and less light for taking a picture. There are some specific properties associated with small aperture vs. a large aperture. A small aperture (high f-stop such as f/16) lets in less light which might be tricky in a low light situation and when you take the picture most everything will be in focus. When you are shooting at f/2 your film can get a lot more light and the plane of focus is very small. Any questions? Beuler?

Oh, one more cool thing, the shape of you aperture determines the shape how how blurry lights in your pictures look. For example, check out this picture. How would you guess that the photographer got the lights to look like hearts? hint: it's kind of a trick question

The images and more information are posted in this photography article