- What is aperture?
Well, in this video, we're gonna dig
into the basics of understanding
how aperture affects your exposure in your video,
but also we're gonna go through
how you can creatively use your aperture
to get specific looks out of the footage
that you were shooting.
All right, guys, let's get into it.
(upbeat music)
So this is part two of my three part series
that I'm doing around the exposure triangle.
And what we're focusing on is aperture,
which is an element that's in your lens,
it's not on the camera itself.
And so your aperture helps control your exposure
alongside your shutter speed and also your ISO.
So let's just start with a basic understanding
of what aperture is.
And the easiest way
to think about this is just think of a hose.
If you have a very small hose
little bit of water will be able to come through it,
whereas if you have a massive hose,
a ton of water can come through it.
Now that's what aperture is for light.
So if you have a very small aperture, little tiny aperture,
then you're gonna get very little light
through your lens,
and if you have a huge wide open aperture,
then a ton of light is gonna hit through your lens.
So a camera lens is made up
of a bunch of different components
and in there there's a series of blades
that kind of open and close.
And so you can see right here on screen,
this is a photo lens, and you can see how they click open
and then they click down and close down.
So a very tiny hole, like I said,
lets in very little amount of light
and a very wide open aperture let's in a ton of light.
So how this affects your exposure is
that when you have your aperture wide open,
your sensor is more exposed to light,
so your image is gonna be brighter.
Now, if your aperture is closed completely down,
there's gonna be less light hitting your sensor,
so your image is gonna be much darker.
So your aperture is gonna be displayed as a number.
It's either gonna be displayed with an F before it
or just as a standalone number.
So you will see something on your camera that says an f/2.8
or an f/5.6 or an f/8, an f/11, f/16
or say, an f/22
Now when you're using cinema glass,
you're actually gonna see this displayed
a little bit differently, it's gonna be a T-stop.
And I'll talk about cinema lenses later in this video
because there's some interesting differences
between the two styles of lenses,
but for most of us, we're gonna be using photo lenses.
Right now I have a photo 35 millimeter on this camera
and I'm shooting at an f/1.4.
So how the number system works is
that the higher the number, the less light
that's gonna be hitting your sensor
and the lower, the number, the more light
that's gonna be hitting your sensor.
So an f/22, an f/16, an f/11 is going to be a darker image
and then an f/1.4, f/2.8, those are gonna be much brighter.
So when you have a super bright image,
everything's overexposed, then you're gonna wanna
close down your aperture.
Now, if you're in a darker situation,
there's not a lot of light,
you're gonna wanna open up your aperture
and let a ton of light into the sensor,
but beyond light transmission,
your aperture also controls blurry background.
So right now I'm shooting on a 35 millimeter, 1.4
and I'm actually shooting at 1.4
so that I can get the most amount of blur in the background.
So when you open up your aperture
and let more light into your sensor,
basically the diameter of your aperture the bigger it is,
the more that your background is gonna go out of focus
and you're gonna get the super shallow depth of field.
Now, if you close down to an f/22,
everything will be in focus.
So aperture not only controls your exposure,
but it also controls your depth of field.
And so if you're trying to get cinematic looking footage,
you really like that blurry background,
then the solution to that is opening your aperture
as wide as possible
and that's what will create that shallow depth
of field look.
So you have to use your other exposure tools
to darken down your image
so that you can get your aperture wide open
because if you're at a 1.4 and you're outside,
you're never gonna be able to get an exposure
that's not overexposed
unless you really crank up your shutter speed,
but those come with other issues.
So the solution to be able to shoot wide open aperture
in bright situation is use an ND filter.
So what an ND filter is, is sunglasses for your camera.
And there's been a lot of confusion,
I've done different videos around ND filters in the past,
but an ND filter is essentially just sunglasses
for your camera.
So when you're in a situation
where you wanna have a super shallow depth of field,
you wanna open up your aperture and it's bright
and everything's overexposed, you put sunglasses
in front of your lens.
That's basically just an ND filter.
So ND filters are useful if you really want
to get shallow depth of field
while still maintaining a low shutter speed
because if you remember back to the shutter speed video,
you don't wanna crank up your shutter speed
and get that really jittery looking footage.
So the only solution to have your shutter speed low
and your aperture wide open is to use ND filters.
And ND filters come in two styles.
You can either get a variable ND filter,
which has multiple stops of neutral density,
which is essentially the sunglasses,
so the effect of how dark it is,
you can have multiple stops on one filter,
or you could just have a single filter
and that is just one amount of light transmission.
The issue with variable ND filters is
that if you're on super wide lenses,
so if you're on like a 16 millimeter
and you're vlogging and you have it closed all the way down,
you might get some weird vignetting effects
because the way that variable ND filters work,
however variable ND filters do make it much easier
because you have to carry less filters
and you get more stops of ND.
So typically I'll have a two to five variable ND
and a six to nine.
And just those two ND filters allow me
to control the light in any situation
and be able to get the proper exposure.
Now, if I'm really worried about these vignetting effects,
then I'll have to bring along
some of these individual ND filters,
and when I do that,
I have to carry around more filters with me.
All right, so let's get into some creative things
that you can do using your aperture.
So beyond background and exposure,
your aperture could also be used in different situations
to create different looks out of your footage.
So shallow depth of field is not always ideal.
Sometimes when you're shooting something like a landscape,
it actually will look better if everything's sharp
and in focus.
So if you're doing like a big expansive wide shot,
don't always shoot
at the widest open aperture that you have,
take the ND filter off, close down your aperture,
and then everything will become super sharp.
And depending on the lens that you're using,
the sharpest point of the lens might be an f/8 or an f/16.
A lot of times lenses are not super sharp
when they're wide open.
And that's something to take into consideration
when choosing a lens,
especially if you're gonna be shooting a lot wide open.
So the typical range of ND is just to help
with overexposure when you wanna open up your lens.
Now, if you wanna use ND creatively,
you can get some really cool effects
when you use a really strong ND filter, like an ND1000.
And a lot of times, these are used
for when you're making a time lapse,
so you can make water really flowy
or so you can create that slow shutter effect
where things are moving through the frame.
Now, the other thing
that aperture is gonna control is your lens flares.
And lens flares can look really good
and they can also look really bad.
So when your aperture is wide open,
what happens when you shoot the sun or some sort of light
that's hitting your lens,
it's gonna create this blob effect,
whereas when you're shooting
with a completely closed down aperture,
it's gonna create a star effect
and the star is gonna change based
on how many blades your aperture is.
So you could create some really interesting looking effects
when you close down your aperture
and shoot the sun through something like a tree.
When you have a bright light emerged from your subject
or something in your scene,
that's when you're able to get that star effect.
So when it comes to lens flares in your aperture,
when you're in a scene, don't always think,
Oh, I need to shoot wide open
so I can have everything shallowed up the field.
Sometimes you need to close down,
you might wanna have everything in focus,
or you might wanna get this really cool
star blooming effect, which could look more cinematic
than if you were trying to shoot wide open depending
on the situation that you're shooting in.
So play around with both of those
when you have a light in your scene
and you have it hitting the lens.
So one of the other things
that your aperture controls is your bokeh.
And essentially that is the blurry aspect of your footage.
There is good bokeh and bad bokeh,
and obviously there's a massive range,
but essentially good bokeh has this kind of creamy look
where there's no hard edges
and it's just pleasing to the eye,
whereas bad bokeh just kind of is jarring when you see it.
So to get the most bokeh out of your lens,
you need to open wide up.
So super wide open aperture
and the amount of bokeh that you're gonna get depends
on the lenses that you're using.
Typically expensive lenses, these primes that open up
to like a 1.2, 1.4 are gonna get
some of the best looking bokeh,
whereas if you're using a kit lens,
you're not really gonna be able to get that much bokeh
and it's just not gonna look that good.
Now let's talk about cinema lenses
'cause they're a little bit different photo lenses.
On a photo lens, you have a clicked aperture.
So as you can see right here, it clicks with each F-stop.
Now on a cinema lens,
it's gonna be called a de-clicked aperture,
and that's because there is no hard stops for each aperture.
You can move seamlessly between them so you might be
in between two apertures when you're using a cinema lens.
And this is good for a few reasons.
I use cinema lenses all the time
because there might be situations
where I just wanna open up slightly while I'm rolling
and so I'm able to make small adjustments
and it's not noticeable.
With a photo lens when you make an adjustment,
it's more of like a stop, you'll just see this click.
So it's not very cinematic and it doesn't look good
when you do it while you're rolling,
and that's the difference.
When you're shooting photos, you're taking a photo,
change the aperture, take a photo.
When you're shooting video, you're continuously rolling,
so you don't wanna see that click
when you change apertures.
The other thing was cinema lenses is
that your aperture is gonna be displayed
in T-stops versus F-stops.
To not go deep into the math of this, basically T-stops are
how much light is actually hitting the sensor
versus F-stops are the diameter
of how much your aperture is open.
So if you have two cinema lenses side-by-side,
and you have a t/2.9 on both of those lenses,
you're gonna be getting the exact same amount
of image light transmission through the lenses,
whereas if you had two photo lenses side-by-side
and you had a f/2.8 on both of those lens,
you might be getting a little bit different exposure
through that 2.8.
If you're interested in learning more about cinema lenses,
then let me know down in the comments
and I'll do another video about cinema glass
and why you would choose a cinema lens over a photo lens
and what makes them so special.
Now, guys, if you haven't seen part one of the series,
I highly suggest you check out this video right here,
it goes into shutter speed, which is another aspect
within the exposure triangle,
so that you can get the proper exposure
every time you hit record.
All right, guys, I'll see over there.