What is Aperture?

WHAT IS APERTURE ?

Hey! You must have heard about Aperture, especially if you are a newbie to the photography world. A lot of people find it head scratching but there isn't any rocket science in it.

In simple words it is a opening or hole in your camera through which light enters into the camera. So, what it actually does is it controls the amount of light for your images or videos thus making the images bright or dark. It is represented by ' F/x ' where f and x stands for focal length and diameter of lens respectively.
Smaller the diameter larger or wider will be the aperture.
for an instance f/1.8 is much wider than f/3.5 and will gather much more light.

Look at the images below shot at - f/3.5 & f/6.3 (all other settings were kept same)

From the images above, the one shot at f/3.5 tends to be more brighter and properly exposed than the one shot at f/6.3 which looks slightly under exposed  and dull.

Another thing in which aperture comes in play is bringing the bokeh effect or depth of field or background blur whatever you may like to call it. As the size of aperture widens or increase , it will show a deeper depth of field to the non-focused elements of picture.

(other settings have been adjusted for proper lighting)

As you can see in the pictures above, the depth of field is most dominating in the pic with f/3.6, while it is still fine with f/8 but is shallower in the one with f/16.

Hope you got an idea of what aperture. Thanks for your time!