PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVID WHISTLECRAFT

Photography Hints & Tips

ISO Camera Settings

ISO stands for International Standards Organisation & in basic terms sets the standard for light sensitivity for a given ISO setting.

As an example, an ISO setting of 100 takes longer to absorb the same amount of light as an ISO setting of 1600.

Using a low ISO is generaly the best option as it will give a better quality image with less noise, otherwise known as grain.
For outdoor photography on bright days, setting your ISO to 100 will allow you to take photographs that are noise free and as its bright, your shutter speeds will remian fast enough to enable sharp hand held images.

However, higher ISO settings do come into their own in poor light sistuations where using a flashgun or the built in flash is not practicable or allowed.

By setting a higher ISO setting, the time it takes for the light of the image to be recorded is reduced. This can allow you to still hand hold the camera and get the picture because the shutter speed can be set higher and the image will be frozen by the high shutter speed. Unfortunately, high ISO settings will reduce the overall quality of an image as they introduce much more noise.

The amount of noise will depend upon several factors and one will be the quality of the camera itself. My Canon Eos 1DMkIII will allow for almost noise free images at ISO 400, whilst the Canon Ixus 850Is digital compact I also own has a great amount of noise at the same ISO setting.

However, you have to ask yourself this. Do you want a noise free blury image or a sharp image with some digital noise?

More often than not, its the moment you are capturing and that can often be more important than the overall quality of the photograph. Just remeber, leaving you camera on the full auto setting will in general terms let the camera choose the ISO to use and this is often set at ISO 400. So when you know you dont need that higher noisy setting on a bright day outside, change you ISO to 100 and you will see the difference.

Most digital compacts will allow the user to access the ISO settings and manualy select one, so try yours out and set a low ISO speed to see the difference.