What is Aperture in a Camera? | Tech Blog

Though you have a smartphone whose camera boasts higher megapixel count, it's not confirmed that your phone can click awesome pictures. Like, I always say, there are so many things on which performance of a camera depends. One of them is Aperture. So, In this article, I will try to explain Aperture in the easiest way possible.

In simple words, an aperture is a hole in front of a camera lens through which light enters into the camera. Either on the image sensor or on the retina of your eyes, light is very important in the formation of an image. If you relate the concept of the aperture with our eyes, it would become a lot easier to understand.

Also Read: Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) What is it used for? How it works?

As pupil controls the amount of light enters into our eyes, aperture does the same thing in photography. Larger the aperture, more light will enter into the camera and hence brighter will be the image and vice versa. Expert considers Aperture as one of the three pillars of photography, other two being ISO and Shutter speed. Aperture is not just a hole, it is also responsible for some major things like blurring the background or bringing everything into focus.

Aperture is expressed in f-numbers. These f-numbers are known as f-stops and used to describe the size of the aperture or how much open or close the aperture is. A smaller f-stop means a larger aperture while a larger f-stop means a smaller aperture. Let me explain this to you.

Also Read: The Megapixel Myth : Do more Megapixels mean Better Image Quality?

Usually, we see aperture in the form of f/1.7 or f/2.0. Here, f represents focal length. As we know, the result of a/10 is greater than the result of a/20. Obviously, the same applies here also. When the value in the denominator is small, the size of the aperture will be large and when the value of the same is large, the size of the aperture will be small. For example – f/1.7 is larger than f/2.0.

Aperture is also responsible for the depth of field and blurry background. For those who don't know, depth of field is an area of the image that appears sharp while others remain out of focus (look at the images below). If a camera has an aperture of f/16 (larger f-number = smaller aperture) will bring every area of an image in focus, while a camera with an aperture of f/1.5 (smaller f-number = larger aperture) will focus on the foreground objects and thus make the background blurry.

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