Beyond Phototips

Photography for the Serious Amateur.

Aug 13, 2007

Tiny Tips 8: Best Apertures for Sharpness

by Susheel Chandradhas

Photograph of the scarred, rusted aperture blades of an old lens

If you want the sharpest pictures that your lens can give you, remember not to use its largest and smallest apertures. Most lenses are optimised to be used in the f/5.6 - f/11 aperture range and give their best performance when stopped down a couple of f-stops from the widest aperture or opened up from the smallest aperture.

The problem with using small aperture sizes is that light waves are affected due to diffraction and though you have great depth of field, you lose out on sharpness.

Large apertures are great for low-light, but unless you have an exceptional, lens its just too difficult to produce lenses that are razor sharp at it’s widest aperture.

There are always exceptions and some lenses made by Carl-Zeiss and Leica are just as sharp at f/2.8 (or f/1.8 as the case may be), as they are at f/5.6.

Marvels of science, that’s what they are.

Share this Phototip:

Thank you for reading Beyond Phototips. If you found this post interesting, its likely that you'll like some of our other posts too. Subscribe to our RSS Feed to be updated immediately when we post.

See More posts like this one or Leave a Comment

5 Comments, Comment or Ping

Jim Goldstein

Great tip. This is something I’ve been aware of for a long time, but many are unaware of this. Nice concise post on the topic.

Sep 20th, 2007
Susheel

Thanks Jim,

There are a lot of people getting into photography these days… many without a photographic background. These are the ones that will find tips like this useful.

Sep 21st, 2007
Tamika

Um Hmm, so true! I just got a 50mm f1.8 and I am struggling to nail the focus. I’ll take these tips and keep trying.

Oct 4th, 2007
Susheel

Tamika: Thanks for commenting.

I do understand how frustrating it can be to have to work with a large aperture… it can also be a joy!

In the tip, I was talking about producing lenses that take sharp pictures at f/1.8. However, f/1.8 is a really wide aperture, and at times, the depth of field is negligible, so try stopping down if you want more of the picture in sharp focus.

Oct 4th, 2007