Aperture Priority

Aperture-priority

Photopedia

18 October 2007 14:45


Aperture-priority is a semi-automatic exposure mode available on most modern film and digital cameras.

In this mode the photographer specifies the desired lens aperture (f/number) and the camera automatically sets an appropriate shutter speed based on information from its internal light metering system.

This mode is particularly useful in any shooting situation where it is important to control the depth-of-field. Different manufacturers identify this mode on their cameras using different symbols, for example: Canon and Pentax abbreviate aperture-priority mode as Av for ‘aperture value’, while Nikon, Olympus and Sony simply abbreviate it as A.

Our landscape image has been taken in Aperture-priority and a narrow aperture of f/16 has been selected to get a lot of front to back sharpness (depth-of-field) in the image.