Favorite aperture?

[Heroique]

Often, wind interferes w/ my choice of favorite aperture.

Light does too.

Worse is when they’re in a fickle mood & conspire against me.

[Preston]

I don't really have a favorite aperture. On average, my apertures range from f16 to f32, with the occassional f45. My choice of aperture depends upon DOF requirements.

--P

[David_Senesac]

An answer to the question without circumstances would be flawed as most here probably momentarily wondered even though they did not bother to explain such. The notion of a favorite aperture is thus somewhat misplaced except as in regards to such being a confident setting one usually produces good optical results from on specific lenses. Accordingly what the question really finds is the type of subjects members tend to shoot. For example the portrait shooter is likely to use wider apertures and the landscaper smaller simply due to the more usual depth of field requirements.

In my case of a landscape photographer, most of my subjects include a foreground, middle ground and background. Even though I might perfectly tilt my lens to a section of the view, few elements are usually flat within that tilted plain and the plain itself often covers just a section of frame, often just the foreground. So my 4x5 150mm Nikor that closes down to F64, I am likely to select shutter speeds to bring the aperture in the F32 to F45 range with those close to F32 more common. However with extreme situations like this:

http://www.davidsenesac.com/Gallery_B/06-E1-3.jpg

I'm going to crank down all the way close to f64 like any member and simply never print too large.

While something near f22 will do just fine with an even receding plain subject like this:

http://www.davidsenesac.com/Gallery_B/10-H1-3.jpg

[Old-N-Feeble]

While I agree with the post above in a purely analog process, since my process will be hybrid, there are other ways to deal with DOF issues.

[alexn]

F/32 almost always to maximize DOF. F/22 when the depth of field is not required (rainforest scenes and waterfalls etc)

[dsphotog]

Depends on the subject and the lens... Some of my lenses have no diapragm, so wide open with those.
On the other hand... For a lot of things, I stop down to enable slow shutter speeds.

[Jess C]

Mostly f-32 for me.

[ic-racer]

Woha, what happened to this thread. How can there be an argument about anyone's 'favorite' anything? Thanks for deleting those posts.

[lenicolas]

f/8 to f/16.
I don't mind an oof foreground in land/cityscapes, and I certainly don't mind a blurred out background in portraits.

[Ari]

Which format?