In the days after the US Department of Justice (DOJ) published 3.5 million pages of documents related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, multiple users on X have asked Grok to “unblur” or remove the black boxes covering the faces of children and women in images that were meant to protect their privacy.
So Wide open = low coverage = small f stop -> lots of light -> “fast” shutter speed. And then the other way around. I think you finally worded it in a way it can stick in my brain! I like thinking about the f value as how much you’re covering the lens.
I like trying to simplify stuff to basic language and I am happy it was helpful
To add more specifics here for you, note that the f-stop is usually shown as a fraction, like f/2.8, f/4.0, etc.
So first of all, since the number is on the bottom of the fraction, there’s where you get smaller numbers = more light.
It’s also shown as a fraction because it’s a ratio, between your lens’s focal length (not focal distance to the subject) and the diameter of the aperture.
So if I’m taking a telephoto shot with my 70-200 @ 200 with the aperture wide open at f/2.8, that means the aperture should appear as 200/2.8 = 71.4mm. And that seems right to me! If you’re the subject looking into the lens the opening looks huge.