Aperture values explained

Aperture values can seem confusing to a lot of people, especially when they’re new to photography. It seems to be one of those things that you just need to accept, and then memorise - the lower the value, the larger the hole. But that doesn’t really explain what’s going on. Wide apertures are described by low numeric values, whereas small apertures are described by higher numeric values. That doesn’t seem logical and often causes people who are learning photography to refer to apertures using terms like “high” or “low”, which also doesn’t make sense!

In order to try and demystify this mathematical oddity, I made a little video to explain what’s going on, I hope it helps. Please leave a comment if you’d like me to do more short explainer videos and suggest topics.