What's your favourite f-stop ?

The question in the title started out as a joke question sometimes asked of photographers in interviews. It seems initially stupid - after all, we can use whatever f-stop we like and tend to change it for each shot. But after thinking about it a bit, I realised it is also a fairly defining component of a photographer's style.

Sure I shoot landscapes with deep depth of field and try to pick the most appropriate f-stop for whatever I'm shooting. Or I'll pick f8 when I don't care but want to make good use of my lens. Or I'll shoot a wide open aperture when I want a lot of blur or low light, stopped way down when I want the most possible depth of field.

But all things being equal, I tend to gravitate to shooting wide open or with a very shallow depth of field. My default choice, if I don't think of a good reason to change it, is close to wide open. This lets me be lazy - I don't need a tripod so much. It also lets me shoot a lot with available light - I can hand hold indoors. I also tend to select very fast lenses, 50mm f1.4, 85mm f1.8 and shoot those wide open, recently. My choice of f-stop influences my choice of lenses and how I'm using them.

My f-stop of choice frees me from the digital bane of existence, sensor dust. As I prefer to shoot at the wide open end of the scale, sensor dust doesn't feature in many of my shots. It also gives my portraits a consistently subject oriented feel. I'm not shooting the environment, any that is there is very quickly relegated to background colour and texture by my choice of f-stop.

Being aware of this bias in how I approach shooting is hopefully going to open my eyes to other ways to approach the same scene, maybe by trying to shoot some things with other f-stops on occasion, even when the situation doesn't demand it.