Portrait Aperture

[spencer28n]

Hey Guys,

I've been looking through old threads past few days seeing if there's a thread about this. I'm getting into Portraiture and was wondering what apertures everyone here uses. I've seen people use 2.8 and others use 16.

What aperture do you use and why?

Spencer

[KathrynWilson]

I typically don't go narrower than 4.0 unless it's a large family group. I like the softness of shallow DOF.

[RexK_Cozumel]

I use everything from wide open to f22 it all depends on what I am trying to do. Normally I will stay in the 2.8 to 5.6 range however.

[LoveDSLR]

Portraiture is such a broad term that calls for DSLR & Medium Format, lenses from 35mm to 300 mm and apertures from f/1.2 to f/22.

One should know the effect from various combination and signatures from different lenses to decide what is best for that particular assignment. Personal style also influence the choices of gears and settings as well.

My preference is f/1.2 - f/2.8 and stop down for group shots.

[jrgarcia619]

small # = shallow dof = wide open= lots of light.

Larg # = lots in focus = small opening = little light

When you describe the aperture opening it's the opposite of the numbers. So f/2.8 would be pretty wide open while f/11 would have a small opening letting in much less light.

I shoot my portraits anywhere between f/2.0 and f/3.0 depending on how much detail I need to show. For groups I try to shoot at an smaller aperture or larger f stop number. f/5 and up.