LooksLikeRain wrote:
I am a relative newbie to photography, and I have been trying to read
some good books to teach me the basics of exposure as well as
Photoshop CS2 tips and tricks.

There is a simply *huge* amount of stuff to learn! Some of it
may be easy, some not. Some is easy only after you learn other
parts, but you don't know that 'til you get there...

One question I have is regarding the
lens aperture in respect to the camera aperture.

Keep in mind that there is only one diaphragm, and it is in the
lense. On most lenses, but not all, there is a ring on the lense
to control it. On most cameras, but not all, there is also a
way to control it from the the camera. But it all controls that
one aperture in the lense.

If my lens is only
rated for 3.4-5.6 aperture,

That is just a measure of how wide the widest aperture that can
be set actually is, and the range indicates you have a zoom
lense that is a bit different at the short end of the focal
length range than it is at the long end. The numbers mean that
with the focal length at minimum the largest aperture it has is
f/3.4, but when set to the longest focal length the largest
aperture is only f/5.6.

then will it do me any good to set my
camera aperture to say f/11 or f/22 or is that just going to use the
minimum aperture the lens will allow of f/5.6?

The f numbers get smaller for larger apertures (because f/stop
is a ratio of the focal length to the aperture size, not the
size of the opening). It is confusing, but to be absolutely
correct a _larger_ f/stop is a _smaller_ aperture. The minimum
f/stop is the maximum aperture (f/3.4, for example).

So, at the longest focal length, your camera can probably set
the lense to f/5.6. To make that work commonly requires the ring
on the lense itself be set to the smallest aperture (e.g., f/22,
though it might be f/16 or f/32 on some lenses).

Then what actually happens is the lense stays wide open until
you press the shutter release button. The camera closes down
the aperture to whatever it is set to just before it fires off
the shutter. But what you see looking through the viewfinder is
always with the lense wide open! That is useful for two
reasons, first that more light comes through so that you can see
to focus, but also the focus is more critical (less depth of
field) when the lense is wide open and hence you can focus more
accurately.

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)