STOP These APERTURE MISTAKES! (ƒ/11-ƒ/16)

so camera settings and specifically speaking aperture is perhaps the single greatest source of confusion when it comes to determining the best settings for landscape photography should we use a large aperture with a small f-stop number to throw the background out of focus or should we use a small aperture with a large f-stop number to create those razor sharpen in focus images or should we use something between both of these aforementioned scenarios and that doesn't even account for the fact that the aperture you choose will also impact the overall exposure based off the shutter speed and iso you dial in and as if that wasn't enough each aperture value used will also result in a completely different depth of field it's enough to really scramble your brain and in this video i want to share with you the five mistakes i used to make all the time when attempting to determine which aperture to use for a given situation in hopes that my mistakes and my errors will help you identify which aperture is best to use the next time you're out on location so to jump right into it and these mistakes they're they're not ranked in order severity but they are ranked in order as they occurred for me when i was navigating the the do's and the don'ts when it comes to selecting the appropriate aperture to use for a given situation and the very first mistake the very first mistake that i encountered is something that i call constant aperture when i first got started with landscape photography i consumed as much information on the topic or on the genre as i possibly could i listened to podcasts i watched lots of youtube i read books and articles and i constantly heard the pros and the professionals talking about f11 seems like all apertures that were used for outdoor photography were always around f11 so i figured to myself you know if the pros are doing it then i should try and do the same thing too there's a reason why the professionals are using f11 so i'm going to follow suit and everything i shot was at f11 now this image i'm about to show you is the very first photograph that i ever took that i would consider to be a landscape image and of course as you can imagine i shot it at f11 and here it is right here as you can see this this guard rail which i mean there's a lot of a lot of things wrong with this image but from a focusing and aperture perspective this area right through here is far too close to my camera to be able to try and get all of this in focus i don't even recall exactly where i even focused for this photograph but i can tell you one thing the foreground area here is definitely not in focus and i ended up going through f11 constantly for i'm not sure exactly how long i did this for maybe the first five or six months but everything was shot at f11 sometimes it worked out but it was never my plan like this is a good example of it right here where i think having this foreground the immediate foreground right through here is uh having it out of focus it it it works okay but it was definitely not my intent you know once again like the previous image these foreground uh this foreground element was far too close to my camera to be able to get it in focus using f11 i was actually focusing on i believe this little sign right here and as you can see everything back here was in focus but um everything in the foreground is a little bit soft so i think sometimes it did work out okay but it was never my intention if i had this kind of little happy accidents occur you don't make mistakes we have happy accidents but the the next mistake once i kind of moved on beyond the the constant aperture is something that i call exposure is everything and when i moved beyond the first mistake and i because i remember thinking to myself you know there's so many different apertures to choose from on the lens you can't always use f11 there's got to be more to it than that i started to experiment a little bit more and i started to at this point i started to realize exactly how the light meter worked on a camera and i started to kind of understand that if i could get that light meter indicator to stop near zero or on zero that would basically be my camera indicating that my image is reasonably exposed and i started to realize that aperture is a great way to impact exposure so now everything became all about exposure it was no longer about f11 it was all about getting that light meter to stop at zero and i was starting to shoot around sunrise and sunset in dimmer lit situations so in order to get that light meter to stop at zero i ended up using a much larger aperture than i probably should have been using and in this example right here i like the image you know storm coming in through here i got a little bit of foreground this is a very old image but once again everything right through here it's completely out of focus i think this was shot at f 6.3 or or maybe even f4 but definitely not the aperture that i should have been using in order to get this entire image in focus and that was something that happened to me time and time again i just started to open up the aperture as wide as i needed to to get a reasonable exposure without really paying attention to what was going to be in focus in my scene and and once again like the first mistake there was those situations where you kind of had those happy accidents and here's one right here too where this was shot i think at f 6.3 or maybe f 7.1 and as you can see everything in the background well you can see i definitely over sharpened this image but everything in the background is is slightly out of focus the tree is definitely in focus and i think this it works in this scenario i definitely got a little bit lucky here but those kind of situations where i was just always paying attention to exposure and not so much the depth of field and not so much as to what was actually going to be in focus it was just all about the exposure so that was kind of the second mistake i started to get myself into and the third mistake now and this is a big one and it's something that i call vision less and it's basically not shooting with the end in mind so whenever you get to a location and you're setting up your composition not kind of thinking about what you want the end result to look like because aperture is not only a tool to enable you to create a reasonably exposed image it's also a tool to enable you to get a little bit creative with your photographs and there's a lot of different ways that you can use aperture as kind of a creative tool in your in your tool chest and i think shooting with the end in mind and thinking about what you want from your photograph it's a great way to think about what type of an aperture you want to dial in for a specific scenario and i think i have two very very good examples of this this image right here where i love this little bit of fall color coming through right through here but it was nowhere near enough to be a key element in this photograph the key elements in this image were of course the color in the sky the reflection of the color in the sky you had these little lily pads in the foreground and then of course you had this tree kind of arching up right through there and those were all the main elements those were the key components of this photograph and that autumn color in the background that kind of blanket of just a little bit of color was just kind of like a supporting element just a little bit of a background interest or backdrop interest i should say so i wanted to slightly throw that out of focus and you really can't tell but if you zoom in you can start to see now that the tree is perfectly in focus but everything back here is just slightly out of focus and that's just a good example of shooting with the end in mind i just wanted that color to just be kind of like softly accented in the background and utilizing a smaller aperture or i should say a larger aperture with a smaller f-stop number enabled me to kind of throw that background just ever so slightly out of focus now this next example right here is the complete opposite of that where the canine in the background here is definitely a main element of this photograph you have this kind of winding river around this canyon and those are two elements of this photograph that are absolutely critical and those two elements are just as important as this tree right here in the foreground so in this scenario i wanted to use a small aperture which with a with a large f-stop number i think this was f11 or maybe f14 and i wanted to get everything in focus because the tree in the foreground was just as important as the k n and the river winding in the background so i wanted everything to be in focus and i ended up selecting an aperture that would would enable me to do just that if i zoom in you can see that everything is in focus all the way through to the background here and i think that's a good example of of shooting with the end in mind and identifying what your vision is for a particular photograph before you start to kind of fiddle around with your settings and specifically your aperture now the fourth mistake is something that i call lens stranger and just as the name suggested it it has to do with not being fully aware of your lenses capabilities every single lens operates a little bit differently they all have different zones in their aperture range that uh your lens will perform at its best you probably have heard this called a sweet spot before and i made a video about this a while ago about how you can test your lens at home to determine what the sweet spot is for image sharpness or image clarity it's a real simple process you just basically put kind of a static object maybe in your backyard or in your house and put your camera on a tripod and point it at this object and just take images adjusting the aperture get all those images back in on your computer and just start to kind of review them to figure out where your lens looks the best what aperture does it look the best at and every like i said every lens is a little bit different you might be able to find this information online as well if you don't want to actually perform that test but understanding where your your lens performs the best is is a great thing to to get used to and to understand and this is an example right here where this was a it doesn't look like it but this was a very bright day and i wanted to kind of create this moody kind of dark ominous kind of spooky cinematic looking image so i wanted to block out a lot of that light so i stopped my my lens down all the way i think it was f22 and i didn't really understand what diffraction was at the time i didn't realize that that was one of the apertures that was usually the least sharp of most lenses you know once you get above 18 f18 diffraction starts to occur and a lot of this image softening starts to happen and so i really wasn't even paying attention to that as you can see everything in this photograph is fairly soft none of it is as tack sharp as i would have wanted it to be and if i would have been paying attention to that and if i would have known that this lens like most lenses don't perform well at f 22 i probably would have stopped it down to maybe like f 11 or maybe used f16 at the most in an aperture that performs a little bit better than f22 and here's the exact opposite example right here where in this scenario there's plenty of ambient light right through here there was no wind moving anything i didn't really have a lot of things that i had to adjust for i could use whatever shutter speed i needed to use i could use whatever iso i needed to use and i wanted to pick an aperture that was the sharpest that this lens possibly could operate at and it was right around i think not 100 certain i'll flash it on the screen here but i think it was f 7.1 where this particular lens performed very very well and as you can see zooming in here everything is tack sharp all through here and that's because i knew that this particular aperture was going to be the sharpest for this particular lens so not being a stranger to your lens and taking the time to figure out exactly what aperture your lens performs best at is a great best practice to get into and the fifth and final mistake and this is a big one and it's something i still fall victim to from time to time and it's something that i call distant subject and basically what distant subject is has to do with the how far away things are in your scene so being aware of how far is the closest thing to your lens and how far away is your mid ground and how far away is your background and understanding exactly what aperture you need to dial in in order to get the areas in focus that you want in focus so there's a lot of different ways to do this and a lot and in mistake number five kind of goes hand in hand with mistake number four because after you use your lenses uh enough you start to realize that with this particular lens maybe if i'm using f11 i can't have anything in the foreground that's closer than say six feet if i want to focus on infinity and still get everything in the foreground in focus it just takes a little bit of practice but just paying attention to where the things are in your seam will help you determine exactly what aperture you want to dial in so if you have something very close to your foreground and you have something in your background that you want to have sharp you probably don't want to shoot that wide open at f4 focusing on the foreground because everything in the background is going to be completely soft so paying attention to where things are placed in your scene will absolutely help you to determine exactly what the best aperture is for a given scenario and if you're ever unsure i highly highly recommend taking a couple test images at different apertures on the and looking on the back of your camera don't wait till you get home do it while you're on location and zoom in to certain areas of your scene to see if they are in focus and if they're not maybe go up a couple of apertures so maybe not using f8 maybe try f11 or f16 and just do a little bit of experimenting while you're on location to make sure that you're getting everything in focus that you want in focus and every once in a while you get into a scenario like this right here where you just can't get everything in focus you know i i shot this image right here and i i focused on infinity i was at f 16. i thought for certain i'd be able to get everything in the foreground right through here because these rocks they weren't that close to me i think these rocks were maybe seven or eight feet away they weren't a couple inches away and i didn't check when i was on location that was the the big issue that i i encountered really and i just got him back home in post and sure enough everything was in focus about right through here but then it fell off right here at the zero hour and everything right through here is completely out of focus here's another example image right here where i wanted to i knew i wanted to get this man in focus in this area right through here i also wanted to try and get the background in focus right through here and i thought i was you i thought f11 was going to be enough to do that and it turns out it wasn't it wasn't that big a deal in this scenario this uh you can see there's a lot of noise in this photo but um not having all of this in perfect focus isn't that big of a deal once again one of those kind of happy little accidents but i wasn't i wasn't really aware of where things were in my scene and how that might affect the overall aperture that i choose and sometimes you just can't get everything in a single shot like this image right here where this patch of grass is far too close to my camera i could have used f16 and i wouldn't have been able to get this in focus and this area in focus in a single shot and this is kind of where focus stacking comes in which i made a video on this as well which i'll link in the description below if you're not familiar with what focus stacking is so those are the five aperture mistakes that i used to make all the time when i first got started and i i've resolved many of them except mistake number five every once in a while i still get tripped up and on a certain scenario or i should say a certain composition as far as understanding where certain key components are in the scene and what aperture will be required to get everything in focus so i do hope that some of that information will help you the next time you're out on location and you get a little bit confused or you're not 100 sure as to what aperture you should dial in i hope some of the mistakes that i made and some of the errors that i made will possibly help you to kind of think a little bit differently or think through the process of determining what aperture is best so um as always if you have any questions definitely leave those in the comments section below and i guarantee i will get back in touch with you and if you did enjoy this week's video if you could give it that thumbs up and subscribe to the channel if you're not subscribed already and as always i really really do appreciate you watching this week's video and i will see you all next wednesday bye

Channel: Mark Denney

Views: 260,640

Keywords: landscape photography, landscape, photography, mark denney, landscape photography for beginners, landscape photography tips, landscape photography tutorial, landscape photography tutorials for beginners, aperture, landscape photography aperture, best aperture for landscape photography, aperture tutorial photography, aperture tutorial, best camera settings for landscape photography, camera settings, aperture settings for landscape photography, aperture photography, fstop, f-stop, tips

Id: CdNzZ9oLdKc

Length: 15min 43sec (943 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 10 2021