Photography Question

[carpenterdean]

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.

[showtime]

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

[carpenterdean]

Thanks alot for that info mate, very helpful

[JCJC]

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.