*We'll be using the SONY RX100M4 film camera as a reference for this article.* # Aperture - Intro If you've ever used a camera, you know that photography jargon is difficult to unpack - it's not easy navigating the web of a hundred websites all at once! So here's the first in a series where I try to unpack some photography jargon - starting from the "A" dial of my camera - the aperture! Let's take a look at your monitor. Here's the aperture settings on mine: %%photo of your camera%% The more mathematically aligned among you may notice that this is a ratio - aperture basically tells us the size of the lens as a ratio to it when fully-sized - giving us a value for how closed the [[Picking a Shutter Speed (Personal)|shutter]] is. For context, a lens is going to be open, though most cameras have a little shader that opens and closes to varying degrees --> f/ ratio on the bottom of your camera - which dictates how big your lens opening is (which also forces a certain amount of light in per increment!) note that this is actually inversely proportional - a larger aperture has a smaller number ratio! e.g an aperture of f/4 is much larger than an aperture of f/16 Aperture is part of the **exposure triangle** - the three variables which can affect exposure - shutter speed, Aperture and ISO. %%diagram of the exposure triangle here!%% %%take photos of the same object with f/2, f/4 etc different flengths%% %%show the dial and how "A" and "M" allow you to change the aperture%% %%cool stuff.mp4%% # Calculating Aperture a couple formulas - you either use the