F-stops in particular have a tremendous effect on image characteristics, some of which may not be obvious to amateur shooters. For the bulk of this article, we'll discuss and improve your grasp of the mysterious f-stop. When you take pictures, you're using the interplay between shutter speed, ISO and f-stop settings to control exposure. F-stops especially seem to baffle many novice shooters, perhaps because of the weird alphanumeric symbols used to indicate these settings. Happily, figuring out f-stops is really pretty simple once you disassemble the term and break it up into understandable parts.