Many friends have also asked me: Can your camera take photos with a very dark background? In fact, the phenomenon of “the background is very dark” is called “Depth of Field”. The correct way to say that the background is very dark is that the depth of field is very shallow. The background is very clear and the depth of field is very deep. The depth and shallowness of the depth of field are directly related to the size of the aperture:

The larger the aperture, the shallower the depth of field. Able to make the background very blur.

The smaller the aperture, the deeper the depth of field. Able to make the background very clear

Aperture refers to the size of the opening in your camera’s lens. When you take a photo, light passes through this opening and reaches the camera’s sensor, creating an image.

The aperture of the lens is adjusted to make it smaller or larger. This is done manually by you, or automatically by the camera, depending on which camera shooting mode you select.

The main reason you’d want to adjust your camera lens’s aperture is to take control of depth of field. Depth of field refers to the amount of the image that’s in focus – from front to back.

A shallow depth of field means that only part of the image will be in focus. The rest of the image will be blurred.

This is perfect for portrait photography where you need to draw attention to your subject. The shallow depth of field means your main subject is in sharp focus against an attractive, blurry background.

The further away your background is, the more likely it is to be blurry. This is useful to remember if your largest aperture isn’t large enough to blur the background a lot. Move your subject further away from the background and shoot again. The blur should become more noticeable.

Written by Collin Smith @ remotes.works Holborn London