Flash photography tip: Control flash light with your aperture

Friday 5 July 2024, 13:31 by Elja Trum | 2,615 views | 0 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

You mainly use the aperture to get the desired depth of field in your photo. A wide aperture opening, a low number, gives you a blurrier background. A narrow aperture opening, a higher number, makes the foreground and background sharper.

Lieke - f/3.5, 1/50s, 200 ISO @ 120mm
The aperture also affects the amount of light entering your camera. Both the ambient light and the power of your flash. This is different from the shutter speed. The shutter speed only affects the ambient light.

So if you open up the aperture further, for example from f/5.6 to f/2.8, both the ambient light and the flash light become brighter. The depth of field also becomes smaller. This makes the foreground and background in your photo blurrier.

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About the author

Elja Trum is the founder of Photofacts and online photography course website Photofacts Academy. He has been writing about photography since 2006. Elja is also the author of (Dutch) books on composition, black-and-white photography, flash photography and portrait photography.

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