Introduction to Photography: Aperture

        You use aperture to control the amount of light in your photo, and to create your desired depth of field. F stop is the opening of the lens that controls how much light passes through to the sensor. You need to adjust this to your liking on whether you want your picture to be darker or brighter. Where you will most likely find the widest aperture on the camera is on the top of the lens. Depth of field is controlling the sharpness of a picture. A large aperture will give you a shallow depth of field, and a small aperture will give you a deep depth of field. Since the aperture is wide, it is letting in more light, which means your photo will be darker, so it will only focus more on subjects that are close to the camera. A small aperture lets in less light, so more objects will appear clearer and sharper even if it is far away.