How To Memorise The F-Stop Scale, Easily

On this short video Bloomberg Videographer and producer of Indy Mogul Griffin Hammond and Nick Bodmer talks about a very simple method for remembering the F-stop scale very easily.

This is one of the shortest videos we have published here on LensVid in a long time but we actually find it very helpful. If you want to make sure you always get the F-stop scale correctly (i.e. know which F-stop number comes after another – or to put this another way which F-stop numbers cut the light by half in relation to the previous ones) all you need to do is remember two numbers.

The first is 1 and the second is 1.4. Now all you need to do is continue this series of numbers and you will never forget the scale

1, 1.4 (now multiply each by two and you go the next numbers in the series and so on), 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22, 32… (do you know what is the next f/stop number?)

This is all you need to remember from now on – how cool is that?

You can find many more helpful photography tips on our Photography tips section here on and LensVid. If you like this short video you can check out more of Hammond’s videos, you can check them out here on LensVid.

Iddo Genuth

Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.