Thanks for the explanation. As a newbie I could not figure out why the aperture number increased in value even though the opening decreased. Knowing now that the value is actually a fraction has eliminated the confusion.

VERY helpful article for this novice. As you are in Colorado, perhaps you can help on this topic: I’m going on a northern lights tour in a few weeks, and am considering getting a camera better than my iPhone. I’ve read many articles recommending various cameras (Sony a6000 keeps coming up), but then when looking at specs, most [affordable in my budget] cameras state an operating temperature only down to 32f. I’ll be in Norway with tens in the teens and 20’s. Are the manufacturer specs to be taken seriously for real-world use? Would I ruin a camera using it in temps 20 degrees cooler than its rating?

However, if you need to modify the Lantern, it also ships with a four-section, fully adjustable, removable light-control skirt. So, if you did need to control the Lantern to predominantly point toward one angle, you could do so.

The other more important impact is depth of field – the amount of your photo that appears to be sharp from front to back. For example, the two illustrations below have different depths of field, depending on the size of aperture:

Light DomeIII

Typically, the “maximum” aperture of a lens, which is also often referred to as “wide-open” aperture, will be something like f/1.4, f/1.8, f/2, f/2.8, f/3.5, f/4, or f/5.6.

These are the main aperture “stops,” but most cameras and lenses today let you set some values in between, such as f/1.8 or f/3.5.

The Light Dome is Aputure’s offering for a softbox. However, unlike a conventional softbox that (as by name) is rectangular, the Light Dome is circular. By design, this “wraps” the light around the subject, avoiding any unwanted spill into the background. Because the dome is deep (twenty-four inches deep), it ensures a tighter, more focused beam with a reflective interior.

That is an important concept! Often, you’ll hear other photographers talking about large versus small apertures. They will tell you to “stop down” (close) or “open up” (widen) the aperture blades for a particular photo.

That’s a great question. I constantly use my cameras in colder weather than 32F, no matter what they’re rated for. Even sub-zero temperatures (still talking Fahrenheit) don’t concern me, although I don’t think the camera warranty would still apply if something did go wrong in those temperatures.

This is very interesting! As you can see, in the f/4 photo, only a thin slice of the lizard’s head appears sharp. The background of the photo is very blurry. This is known as depth of field.

If someone tells you to use a large aperture, they’re recommending an f-stop like f/1.4, f/2, or f/2.8. If someone tells you to use a small aperture, they’re recommending an f-stop like f/8, f/11, or f/16.

The Light Dome is the perfect modifier to illuminate your subject with a soft light that wraps around them, making it ideal for corporate shots, tutorial videos, conversation scenes, product shots, and even portrait photography.

If you have a 50mm f/1.4 lens, the largest aperture you can use is f/1.4. Professional constant aperture zoom lenses like a 24-70mm f/2.8 will have f/2.8 as their maximum aperture at every focal length. Whereas cheaper consumer-grade lenses such as 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 will have their maximum aperture change depending on focal length. At 18mm, the maximum is at f/3.5, while at 55mm, it changes to f/5.6. In between is a gradual shift from one to the other.

It should be noted that the Light Dome II also ships with two diffusion sheets of 1.5 and 2.5 stops. All iterations of the Light Dome (and the Lantern) use a Bowens mount, making it accessible for a wide variety of lights. The Light Dome retails for $149, while the Light Dome II retails for $219.

Because of the light fall-off and projected shadows, it also looks like he’s being lit by a motivated light source—like a ceiling light. It’s nice, but it also feels quite dramatic.

These blades form a small hole, almost circular in shape — your aperture. They also can open and close, changing the size of the aperture.

As such, you’d typically use this light modifier when illuminating people or objects. Additionally, the Light Dome II has a gel holder, allowing you to add a creative flair to the soft lights. If you need to get in close, and find the light has become a touch too hard or that there are visible lines from the diffusion fabric being folded, the Light Dome also ships with an internal diffuser that will significantly soften the light again.

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Of course, putting everything into practice is another matter. Even if this entire article makes sense for now, you’ll still need to take hundreds of photos in the field, if not thousands, before these concepts become completely intuitive.

For example, say that you have an 80-200mm f/2.8 lens fully zoomed out to 80mm. If your f-stop is set to f/4, the diameter of the aperture blades in your lens will look exactly 20 millimeters across (80mm / 4), whereas at f/16, the diameter will be reduced to mere 5 millimeters (80mm / 16).

You might have seen this in your camera before. On your camera’s LCD screen or viewfinder, the f-stop looks like this: f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, and so on. Sometimes, it will be shown without a slash in between like f2.8, or with a capital “F” letter in the front like F2.8, which means the exact same thing as f/2.8. These are just examples of different f-stops, and you might come across much smaller numbers like f/1.2 or much larger ones like f/64.

As a beginner photographer, you might have heard of such terms as f-stop or f-number and wondered what they actually mean. In this article, we will dive into these in detail and talk about how to use them for your photography.

Although I irregularly use the Aputure Light Dome (say once or twice every month), if I could, I’d leave it assembled all the time, as it’s a pain to set up (as are most softboxes) and leaving no light leaks can take a few minutes. Aputure, however, heard this criticism and made sure that with their second iteration of the Light Dome (the Light Dome II), it could be assembled and disassembled a lot quicker. In under a minute, in fact.

Light dome150

This is a cool concept. It also makes it easy to visualize why an aperture of f/4 would be larger than an aperture of f/16. Physically, at f/4, your aperture blades are open much wider, as shown below:

By that same logic, an aperture of f/2 is much larger than an aperture of f/16. If you ever read an article online that ignores this simple fact, you’ll be very confused.

Adjusting your aperture is one of the best tools you have to capture the right images. You can adjust it by entering your camera’s aperture-priority mode or manual mode, both of which give you free rein to pick whatever aperture you like. That is why I only ever shoot in aperture-priority or manual modes!

Aputure

You can think of depth of field as a glass window pane that intersects with your subject. Any part of your photo that intersects with the window glass will be sharp. The thickness of the glass changes depending upon your aperture. At something like f/4, the glass is relatively thin. At something like f/32, the glass is very thick. Also, depth of field falls off gradually rather than dropping sharply, so the window glass analogy is definitely a simplification.

You already know the answer to this question, because aperture is a fraction. Clearly, 1/8 is larger than 1/22. So, f/8 is the larger aperture.

Instead, just know that the two biggest reasons to adjust your aperture are to change brightness (exposure) and depth of field. Learn those first. They have the most obvious impact on your images, and you can always read about the more minor effects later.

Like China balls, they are ideal for table scenes that require evenly spread light across multiple participants. Just think, if you were to light a dinner table scene between three members of the family with three separate lights and a softbox/light dome, you’d need three individual light setups. With the Lantern, it’s one — positioned overhead.

Quite simply, the “f” stands for “focal length”. When you substitute focal length into the fraction, you’re solving for the diameter of the aperture blades in your lens. (Or, more accurately, the diameter that the blades appear to be when you look through the front of the lens).

Hopefully, you know how fractions work. 1/2 cup of sugar is much more than 1/16 cup of sugar. A 1/4 pound burger is larger than a 1/10 pound slider.

The second page of our aperture article dives into every single effect of aperture in your photos. It includes things like diffraction, sunstars, lens aberrations, and so on. However, as important as all that is, it’s not what you really need to know – especially at first.

This is why portrait photographers love f-stops like f/1.4, f/2, or f/2.8. They give you a pleasant “shallow focus” effect, where only a thin slice of your subject is sharp (such as your subject’s eyes). You can see how that looks here:

First, the Aputure Lantern is omnidirectional, which means precisely what you might think — light emits from all directions (except for the back of the light, of course). This means that it isn’t really a light modifier that you intend to control, you want it to distribute as directional as intended using a lantern.

Why is large maximum aperture in a lens so important? Because a lens with a larger maximum aperture lets more light into the camera. For example, a lens with a maximum aperture of f/2.8 lets in twice as much light when compared to a lens with a maximum aperture of f/4.0. This difference could be a big deal when shooting in low-light conditions.

Take a look inside your camera lens. If you shine a light at the proper angle, you’ll see something that looks like this:

Light DomeSE

Since people care so much about maximum aperture, camera manufacturers decided to include that number in the name of the lens. For example, one of my favorite lenses is the Nikon 20mm f/1.8G. The largest aperture it offers is f/1.8.

The f-stop, which is also known as the f-number, is the ratio of the lens focal length to the diameter of the entrance pupil. If you did not understand that, don’t worry, because there is a much easier explanation of it for beginners. In very simple language, f-stop is the number that your camera shows you when you change the size of the lens aperture.

Below are some examples of photographs captured at different f-stops from f/2.8 to f/16, to give you an idea of how they are used in the field:

On the flip side, you should be able to see why landscape photographers prefer using f-stops like f/8, f/11, or f/16. If you want your entire photo sharp out to the horizon, this is what you should use.

Led lighting studio

Usually, the sharpest f-stop on a lens will occur somewhere in the middle of this range — f/4, f/5.6, or f/8. However, sharpness isn’t as important as things like depth of field, so don’t be afraid to set other values when you need them. There’s a reason why your lens has so many possible aperture settings.

Amaran

As the Light Dome has a large thirty-five inch diffusion sheet, it not only produces gorgeous soft light, it also creates the perfect eye-light for interview subjects.

Why is your aperture written like that? What does something like “f/8” even mean? Actually, this is one of the most important parts about aperture: it’s written as a fraction.

Unfortunately, you can’t just set any f-stop value that you want. At some point, the aperture blades in your lens won’t be able to close any smaller, or they won’t be able to open any wider.

As we have previously defined, aperture is basically a hole in your camera’s lens that lets light pass through. It’s not a particularly complicated topic, but it helps to have a good mental concept of aperture blades in the first place.

In 2019, Aputure announced the $100 Aputure Lantern, an additional lighting modifier to run alongside their Light Dome selection. Being offered as the cheapest soft light diffusion addition, many looking to keep their production budget low may opt for the lantern over the light dome. However, while they look similar and (ultimately) do the same thing — diffuse light — the light’s disbursement is very different.

One of my friends once had the mirror of his DSLR break in extremely cold weather – not a problem with mirrorless cameras, of course.

You can think of an aperture of f/8 as the fraction 1/8 (one-eighth). An aperture of f/2 is equivalent to 1/2 (one-half). An aperture of f/16 is 1/16 (one-sixteenth). And so on.

Luckily, you have the building blocks. Aperture and f-stop aren’t complicated topics, but they can seem a bit counterintuitive for photographers who are just starting out. Hopefully, this article clarified some of the confusion, and you now have a better understanding of the fundamentals of aperture.

Using an Aputure 120d powered to 75 and positioned at a 45-degree angle, with the Light Dome, we can see it does a great job of illuminating the subject with a soft cast and richly brings out the details of the actor.

However, using the 120d powered to 75 and positioned at a 45-degree angle, but with the lantern naturally facing down, this is how the composition fares.

As the Lantern has a 270-degree beam angle, it’s the preferable choice for creating soft, ambient lighting to illuminate an entire area instead of a single subject. This is useful for shots with numerous people, podcasts, open spaces, and because of the the light’s size, scenes that have small spaces.

Photographers generally don’t care as much about the smallest or “minimum” aperture that the lens allows, which is why manufacturers don’t put that information in the name of the lens. However, if it matters to you, you will always be able to find this specification on the manufacturer’s website. A lens’s smallest aperture is typically something like f/16, f/22, or f/32.

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While the Light Dome and Lantern are both light-modifying tools that soften and evenly spread hard light, there are significant differences between the two tools. But, because they look (and cost about) the same, some new filmmakers may find themselves asking what those differences are. Let’s take a look.

I'm Spencer Cox, a landscape photographer based in Colorado. I started writing for Photography Life a decade ago, and now I run the website in collaboration with Nasim. I've used nearly every digital camera system under the sun, but for my personal work, I love the slow-paced nature of large format film. You can see more at my personal website and my not-exactly-active Instagram page.

I always find that it’s easiest to understand depth of field by looking at photos, such as the comparison below. In this case, I used a relatively large aperture of f/4 for the photo on the left, and an incredibly small aperture of f/32 for the photo on the right. The differences should be obvious:

Thank you so much for explaining this topic in a way I finally understand ! I have just started photography using a Nikon d3200 with 70-300mm lens primarily for wildlife .. I wish I had read this article before I started !

A lot of photographers really care about the maximum aperture that their lenses offer. Sometimes, they’ll pay hundreds of extra dollars just to buy a lens with a maximum aperture of f/2.8 rather than f/4, or f/1.4 rather than f/1.8.

While it’s the same light, at the same power, you’ll notice that the lantern modifier wholly alters the tone of the image. There’s no directional over light, rather a projection of equal ambient light, with few shadows and little contrast. There’s also no overall direction that the light is directed.

The Lantern is even quicker. I want to say it can be assembled and disassembled in seconds, but it’s likely a single second. This, and its smaller size, makes it perfect for run-and-gun scenarios when you need a quick blast of ambient light and don’t have time for a full setup.

A lot of photographers ask me an interesting question: What does the “f” stand for in f-stop, or in the name of aperture (like f/8)?

In the shots below, the actor is positioned in a daylight interior, with strong natural light coming in from the window. As the direction is to have a high-key shot, we need to bring some fill light into the scene to save exposing for the light from the window. And, to equally avoid the highlights from the windows clipping if we were to expose for the interior ambiance.

As you would expect, there are differences between photos taken with a large aperture versus photos taken with a small aperture. Aperture size has a direct impact on the brightness of a photograph, with larger apertures letting in more light into the camera compared to smaller ones. However, that isn’t the only thing that aperture affects.