If you’ve gone to school for photography, you’ve probably been instructed to shoot at f 8 or f 11 as that typically yields greatest image quality.
It’s just another rule made to be broken.
If you want an overall sharp image where everything is in relative focus, then by all means shoot at those two f-stop settings. But if you’re looking to be a little more creative with your art, realize that the f-stop number, or aperture value, is yours to control, and used with mastery, to create beauty with.
To illustrate this principle I snapped some photos of the cherry blossom trees outside my house. I simply love the bokeh (Japanese for blur) you get while shooting them. Here I have posted three nearly identical images with different f-stop values.
Shot at f 5.6. All these were shot closet to sunset so I didn't have too much light to work with, thus the need to bring it up in post.
Shot at f 4.0
Shot at f 2.8. As you can see this one has the most shallow depth of field.
Disregarding the fact that I had to compromise image quality to brighten up the ones with higher f-stop values, I personally enjoy the bokeh of the first image. You might have a different opinion and that’s fine. One of key things to remember is that before we set goals to please others with our craft, we must be able to honestly say to ourselves that we love what we shoot, that we’re the first ones to feel great and be proud of ourselves for producing something amazing, and that’s not something we should easily let go of because of what somebody else said or because this book said that. In the book of Genesis, God spoke “it was good” in response to his acts of creating the heavens and the earth. No one, not even ourselves, can say we’re not entitled to the same joy.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that we should cast aside all criticism. We just need to bear in mind that when creating art for art’s sake, ours is the opinion that has the most meaning in the end.
