The Numbers Count: Apertures
The aperture is the size of the hole in between the lens and the sensor in your camera; a bigger hole lets more light through and vice versa, though confusingly the number telling you what your aperture is set to (the ‘f-stop’ for those in the know) shows a low number for a wide aperture setting and a high one for a narrow aperture.
It seems weird to have two settings for a similar function with ISO and aperture, but the wider you have your aperture set the shorter your depth of field will be. This is the distance between the nearest and furthest feature in focus in your shot.
At first glance it may seem like a good idea to have as much of the scene in focus as possible, and sometimes it is, but a short depth of field is how you can get that lovely soft-focus style imagery (like in the intro to the classic Scott Stevens part above), another great tool to have in your arsenal!
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