Aperture: How It Affects Your Photography & Why You Should Care
The Discerning Photographer posted a good article dealing with aperture from a practical standpoint. This is a subject that tends to be more technical during discussion, so it's nice to see a different approach.
You'll still need to have a basic grasp of f-numbers, but the article is really good about explaining the effects of changing aperture. The two main topics beyond the basics are depth of field and exposure, and the article covers these nicely.
Alexander Kunz
March 5, 2010The article has two flaws:
When I take the lens off of my Nikon DSLRs I will not see the largest opening – but the smallest one. There’s a small pin on it that opens and closes the aperture. Only when the lens is mounted on the camera the aperture opens all the way so that the viewfinder image will be as bright as possible.
And… just IMHO… it is a whole lot easier to think of the aperture not as “the hole”, but of the fins (“curtains”) around that hole. The larger the curtain (f-stop number), the smaller the hole…