PODCAST EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Michael Hall: From ShoHawk Media, this is Film Making Footnote, with your host, Michael Hall. You’re listening to episode 14. This is the show where we give you the best filmmaking and production information so you can make the best project possible without having to spend a bunch time or money at film school. Let’s do it.
What’s up guys? Welcome to episode 14 of Filmmaking Footnote. I am your host, Michael Hall. How are you doing today? How is everyone doing? It’s a little sunny here in Portland, Oregon. It’s a little cold. My gosh, darn cats will not stop wrestling in my office while I’m trying to record, so please excuse any weird noises that you might hear in the background. I apologize for that. Well at any rate today, we are talking about aperture. If you’ve ever taken a basic photography or filmmaking class, or even picked up a camera, a professional camera like a DSLR, you’ve most likely heard the term aperture. But today we’re going to run through the basics and fundamentals of aperture and how this is one of the main components that makes up the image that you see, the final output of an image that you see.
What is aperture? Very simply, aperture is the size of the hole through which light travels in the lens before it hits the sensor of the camera. It’s not actually a setting on the camera, itself, although many modern DSLR cameras have an aperture setting. It’s actually the size of the hole within the lens itself. It’s the size of which the lens, the hole in the lens will let light come through before it hits the sensor of the camera. As you can guess, the larger the hole the more light comes through and hits the sensor of the camera. The smaller the hole the less light comes through and hits the sensor of the camera. Each lens is actually identified by its f/number. The f/number denotes the size of the aperture when it’s wide open, so can actually control how wide the aperture can open. The f-stop, the f/number on the lens is actually dictated by how much light is let in when the aperture is wide open.
It really depends on the lens. Each lens is just a little different and some lenses let in a ton of light and some lenses let in very little light. Obviously, the amount of light that comes in is going to affect the photo or video that you’re shooting.
There’s three major components when you’re looking at the composition of a photo or a video. There’s three components that make up the image quality of that shot. There’s the aperture, which we’re talking about; there’s the ISO; and there’s the shutter speed. The ISO and the shutter speed we’ll cover in upcoming podcasts, but right now, let’s focus just on aperture. Keep in mind those are the three main considerations to take it, to keep in mind when you are composing a shot. Now all three of those considerations – ISO, shutter speed and aperture – are measured by how much light is being absorbed by the camera’s sensor. You’re either looking at it as a half or you’re looking at it as a double.
Again, aperture is measured by how much light is being absorbed by the image that you’re creating. The way this is denoted by … The way that you’re actually measuring light for the aperture is denoted by f-stops and f-stops can be pretty confusing. There’s a few that you should really know if you’re a basic photographer, filmmaker, there’s a few f-stops to remember and that are really important. These are the really important f-stops you need to remember. There is f/2, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16 and f/22. Again, those settings is the amount of light that the sensor is letting in through the lens to the sensor of the camera. It’s a little confusing because the smaller the number, the more light is actually being let through to the camera’s sensor. When you think about the f-stops that I just listed out, an f/2 aperture, an f/2 stop is actually letting much more light through the lens, through to the lens, than an f/22.
What this is really controlling is something called the depth of field. When you look at a photo or a video, the depth of field is how crisp or sharp the background is compared to your subject or what is in the foreground. The lower your aperture, the lower you are on the scale, the more light that you let in, the shallower your depth of field will be on the image. Say for example, you are shooting a model, and this model is standing in front of a house. If you’re shooting this model with an aperture of an f/2 stop, the house is going to look almost blurry. It’s going to be very fuzzy in the background and your model, your subject is going to be very sharp. The less light that you let in, the higher you go on the f-stops.
Say you’re shooting now with an f/22, the more in focus the background becomes. Really the aperture plays a huge role in the composition of your shot. This is something that comes up constantly when I’m working on photo shoots for advertising campaigns, because so often, advertisers for big companies don’t want their product necessarily in the foreground of the shot. They want the consumer to subconsciously pick that their ad is for a certain product, but they don’t want to hit the consumer over the head with the product in the foreground. Sometime they’ll put the product in the background of the shot where the action is actually happening in the foreground with the product in the background. And so in these instances, the advertiser or the marketing agency always asks for the background to be sharp so that you can absolutely see the product in the background.
Again, depth of field is how much of your shot is in focus, whether it’s just the subject in the foreground or if it’s everything in the shot, if it’s the subject in the foreground and whatever is in the background.
All right guys, that’s all we have for aperture. If you have any questions, I know this is kind of a confusing topic, so if you have any questions, head on over to filmmakingfootnote.com\14 and I will answer any questions that you might have. Give me a shout over there, and I will see you back here tomorrow. I will see you then. Have a good day! Bye!
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