Photography Question
 

Hi guys, i'm fairly new to digital slr photography so my question is, when setting the aperture on the camera in manual mode do i need to stick to the parameters of the f rating on the lens aswell, for instance the lens i have is 18-55mm with an f rating of 3.5 - 5.6 but i can set the aperture greater or lower than this in manual mode do you have to stick within the lens capabilities?
Cheers rick.

those figures show the lens' maximum aperture across its zoom range, so in your case it would be f/3.5 at 18mm & f/5.6 at 55mm
those figures are the absolute maximum your lens can give you but at any time & at any zoom setting you can choose a smaller aperture than those numbers given, lets say up to a maximum of f/22 (fairly common size)

also you must remember that as aperture numbers go up
the size of the hole in the lens gets smaller (lets in less light)

have a play with the simulator here - http://www.kamerasimulator.se/eng/?page_id=2

which will show you how different aperture,shutterspeed & ISO affect the image & how you can juggle all 3 to get the image you want :)

Thanks alot for that info mate, very helpful:thumbsup:

Nice find Showtime, as a btw, we find on our canon dslr that we can shoot at 800iso and not notice to much additional grain. Its a good setting to help keep the shutter speed up for fast moving objects.