Today, I had plans to go out hiking with baby B this afternoon. But it felt hot and sunny when we walked up the street to the mailbox, so I didn’t feel like hiking. OK, it was probably only 80 degrees out and I probably should have just gone. Since I didn’t go this afternoon, after B was in bed, I headed out for a quick hike before the sun set. By then, it was actually very pleasant out.
Of course, I had to bring the new camera along.
I have been focusing on trying to learn about the aperture settings. For my simple purposes, this controls how much of the image is in focus. For example, a large aperture is used in my portraits of baby B where he is razor sharp, but the background is blurred out. A smaller aperture is often used in landscape photography when one basically wants the whole image to be in focus.
Just getting this basic principle down has opened up a whole world of options for me.
Here’s a picture of the trail I was on with the mountains in the background. Have I mentioned recently how crazy fortunate I feel to live 5 minutes away from this trail system?
It was so gorgeous out and I easily could have stayed out for another couple of hours if it wasn’t rapidly getting dark. (I was very impressed with how my camera did with the low light levels after the sun sunk below the horizon.)
A larger aperture also lets more light into the camera which makes it easier to get sharper images. The picture of the tree above was taken at f/2.8.
I love the effect of a subject that is in super sharp focus with a blurred background. While aperture has a lot to do with this, I’m finding it to be related to zoom level as well. For reasons I don’t yet really understand, standing further back and zooming in makes the contrast between the sharp focus of the subject and the blurred background much more pronounced.
I’m sure any experienced photographer knows all about the explanation and some day I will too. For now, I am just having so much fun experimenting and learning about all of this.
