Filming & Production
Exposure stop
Also called: stop, one stop, stopping down
Open up a stop and twice as much light lands on the sensor. Close down a stop and half as much does. It gives you one scale across three controls, so halving the shutter speed, opening the aperture by a full f-stop and doubling the ISO all buy the same extra stop, and any of them can pay for another. That is why exposure gets talked about as a trade. A shallower background means opening the aperture, which is a stop bought at the cost of depth of field. Dropping the shutter speed to gain a stop costs you motion blur instead. Third-stop and half-stop clicks on modern lenses are finer divisions of the same unit.