Using ISO Setting

[Aussie Dave]

OK, following on from THIS THREAD, which sort of hi-jacked Monica's thread (sorry Monica ).....

Just with the iso, as a newbie I'd recommend you stay at a default of 400 during the day. You will be hard pressed to notice any noise, but it will help keep your shutter speed up - the main culprit in blurry photos that you will certainly notice

I agree with Kiwi -darren on this, When i began a few years back with my first dslr, I used to use my iso at around 400 and in low light 800, but i could notice noise at 800 sometimes, but now days withy my d200 (nikon) i tend to have my iso on 200.
But as everyone else has been saying its a matter of getting your hands on a few different bodies and making the choice on how it feels in your hands and how well the shots you've taken on your memory cards turn out. You will find this forum wonderful, it is a gem of a site where so much knowledge is shared. You will no doubt learn a lot and meet some wonderful people, just as i have!

Welcome and we all look forward to seeing future shots from you! But keep in mind youll need a good bag and one thats not too heavy!!

Sorry, but I am of a different view.

Newbie or not, the photographer needs to learn how to utilise ISO just as much as they do Aperture or Shutter speed. All three go hand-in-hand and IMO, if the scene allows you to shoot at ISO100 then that's what you should use.

If at the beginning you start shooting with a low ISO setting (eg. ISO100) and find your images are blurry (due to incorrect/insufficient shutter speeds), then you will likely pick up on this quickly and it will be a good lesson learned. Bumping ISO up higher to counter-act what "might" occur is not the right approach (in my mind anyway). That's not to say you should never use a higher ISO setting....but it should be used as required, not just as a fail-safe (for want of a better term).

You could equally say always keep your shutter speed to 1/80th sec. and as long as you aren't using a "long lens" all should be OK (and you should not get many/any blurry images)....but in reality limiting yourself like that is not practical. Agreed this is slightly exaggerated compared to bumping up the ISO level 1-2 stops, but nonetheless shows that learning the basics is what it's all about at the beginning....and sometimes that means learning the "hard way"

Just another point of view to consider...

I can understand your differing POV

Personally if you take ISO out of the trilateral equation it's easier for most to concentrate on the two creative choices

Darren,

Are you suggesting that ISO choice is not a part of the creative process?

I can see the point that you made in your earlier post, and while my tendency would probably fall more with Dave's PoV, (we all know how I feel about learning the basics ) I find your choice of words here to be rather intriguing. Is this just a poor choice of words on your part, or is there something else here that could be worthwhile exploring?

And yes, maybe this should be spawned off into a new thread too.

Well, yeah, a new thread maybe

I suppose you can use ISO as a creative choice to introduce noise - though - Id suggest this is quite rare ? Or at least I think it is.

Id think most photographers only touch ISO as a necessity so they can increase or decrease shutter speed or apperture according to their creative or technical desires, so, to me it's s/s and apperture that are the creative choices, not iso per se

Ah... but ISO does affect creative choice and not because of noise.

Let's use an easy example (and this is a good one for Monica, too), shooting in sunlight. There's a very handy Sunny f/16 rule. The rule says that in normal sunlight (i.e. no clouds), the (well a) correct exposure would be an f/stop of f/16 and a shutter speed of 1/ISOs. e.g. if you were shooting at ISO 200, you'd use f/16 and 1/200s. Once you know that, you could play around a bit:
ISO 200, f/11, 1/400s
ISO 200, f/8, 1/800s
ISO 100, f/8, 1/400s
and so on...

Now, because the light is fairly constant here, you are limited to the appropriate combinations of ISO, f/stop and shutter speed.

For a particular desired creative effect, you might want to go for a larger aperture (for smaller depth of field) but also a relatively slow shutter speed because you want to blur the action (perhaps you are taking photos of racing cars - OK, I don't take photos of racing cars so this may not be a good example): let's say you want f/5.6 and 1/400s. In order to achieve that, you'd need to use an ISO of 50 (assuming your camera could do it). So, ISO would actually be part of the creative decision.

There are a great many other examples where you want to set the shutter speed and the f/stop to specific values for a specific creative effect and so you must change the ISO to achieve that.

OK, I take that point where you want a specific combination of F/stop and s/speed.

More often than not though I'll still maintain (and maybe Im going to be fighting a losing battle here ) that more often than not you will more often set say either an appropriate shutter speed or apperture you want for a particular shot, and only change ISO as a 3rd and last resort

I agree with Kiwi that ISO is "usually" the last to change (other than Aperture and Shutter speed), however my point was that a beginner shouldn't restrict themselves to using any setting (Aperture, Shutter or ISO), just to perhaps gain an advantage over available light, if that advantage is not needed.

I cannot speak for anyone other than myself but I generally try to use the lowest possible ISO setting I can get away with....which on my D70 usually means leaving it on ISO200 - which is it's lowest ISO setting. Should I not be able to compromise my Aperture or Shutter any further, or add additional lighting (flash ?), then I will utilise the ISO setting until I find a happy medium somewhere. I personally wouldn't instruct anyone learning the basics to use a higher ISO than is required - but perhaps that is just me

All three aspects need to work together to perform correct exposure (as so elloquently put by ATJ), so anyone new to photography needs to understand how each part adds to the whole and also how to use each one to best suit the requirements at any given time.

[brentsky]

an interesting discussion i cottoned onto just now.

i personally see ISO settings as creative choices, perhaps moreso in analogue photography rather than digital photography.
I think it goes quite in hand with aperture and shutter speed, just as much as the compositional aspects and the processing (analogue or digital) of a photograph.

maybe in later years, there has been greater (possibly commercial) tendency toward creating images 'clean' of noise and therefore the use of higher (grainy) ISO speeds are reserved only for low light level photography - therefore somewhat rendering ISO choice less of a creative technique in image making.

brentsky

[kiwi]

I think also modern bodies are so good at iso up to 2000 (generalisation) that it becomes less of a consideration.

Witness autoiso on the D3 say for sport. It's a bit counterintuitive to my argument I suppose but I simply do not really care what iso the camera chooses between 200 and 2000 for my purpose. Either the noise is not apparent or easily dosed using modern NR software. If I dont care about it how can it be a creative choice

[brentsky]

I think also modern bodies are so good at iso up to 2000 (generalisation) that it becomes less of a consideration.

i agree with you there

If I dont care about it how can it be a creative choice

i think its essential to know what settings one shoots on, but with modern technology allowing us to obtain decent captures at a press of a button, the camera controls focus, aperture, shutter speed and ISO and IMO somewhat removes the human component including a creative choice to producing an image.

i appreciate every photographer works individually in different contexts; as a student im learning the importance of the combination of the three key settings to making an image

[chrisk]

i appreciate every photographer works individually in different contexts; as a student im learning the importance of the combination of the three key settings to making an image

as you should. we all had to at some point. it does become second nature though and you actually forget that you actually know it ! my old film shooting ass still remembers the sunny16 rule ffs !! lol

FTR: i use auto iso pretty much exclusively nowadays unless im on flash. i see no use for iso other than a means to an end; ie: get your shutter speed up or be able to stop down. its not a creative tool as much as its an enabler for the other creative tools of aperture and shutter speed. i see no creative reason to shoot at higher iso than necessary to getthe shot your after.

[photomarcs]

I can understand from both POV's, but I wont argue against any.

Put simply, there are two ways (so far) of looking at how ISO is used to be creative or to be constructive.

In Rooz's case, by seeing that the D700 is in your hot hands, i can understand why the choice of camera, you can always add grain in as a post process to gain an effect. Thus the creative motion of things you'd natively find in higher ISO's in most cameras is captured in post, and this in my opinion is the better way about it.

But as a "i want to shoot out of my camera purist point of view", i can also understand where brentsky has his arguement as well. The creative motion of higher ISO leads to obscure data being captured. In the sense that in his post, MAYBE he likes to see the obscurity, which i would also label as a creative motion.

There are no flaws in both your arguments in my opinion. You're both Correct in how you handle ISO, I guess it varies with people.

[dawesy]

Having seen the original thread and then read through it all here, I think you all agree on one thing but perhaps just don't realise it. I also think it's the key point here.

You need to learn and understand the effect of ISO setting as well as learning about aperture and shutter speed.

While everyone has a different way of using ISO, shoot as low as possible, use 400 all the time, set it to Auto etc each person has made that decision based on their understanding of how ISO effects the images they take on the camera they use. Once you have that understanding, any of the above approaches might well be the right one for you. However if you don't have that understanding, then you are merely substituting someone else's judgement for your own. This is rarely a good idea, even less so if you take the advice of a concert shooter and you do landscapes....

If you are having issues with the exposure triangle and all the technical aspects of it I recall that I got hold of a book called Understanding Exposure by Byran Peterson when I was first using an SLR and found it very helpfull for all three aspects. It's simple and low level, but it has that grounding you need.

HTH

[kiwi]

Yip, I totally agree with all that

[dawesy]

Sometimes I just love the sense of timing the world around us has.

Just checked out my RSS feeds and right there in the Strobist feed, he is talking about lighting a cavernous climbing Gym and in his discussion of the ambient light, he takes us through using ISO creatively.

To directly quote from http://strobist.blogspot.com/2010/04/on-assignment-earth-treks-pt-1.html

And once you choose how bright you are going to make the ambient you should make your shutter/aperture combo something that will give you sufficient depth of field and/or avoid camera shake -- whichever is more important. That would be the difference between a 30th at f/5.6 and a 125th at f/2.8 [He has 250, but I think he's wrong] . They are the same exposure, but with different priorities.

In the end, we opted for both, shooting this at 1/80th at f/5. I knew the climbers would be moving (if pretty slowly) and I wanted a little extra aperture from wide open to keep things sharp corner to corner. Remember, that is an underexposed ambient exposure, so you have to compensate in some way to boost both aperture and shutter.

So we just raised the ISO to 1000, which doesn't even make a D3 blink -- files look great. But it is important to know that the ambient component of the exposure does not care how big your flashes are. You have to deal with your ambient with a combination of shutter, aperture and ISO.

SO you can see here he had two creative choices, stop the motion with less DOF, or get that DOF but have to worry about blur in climbers. He wanted both, so he upped the ISO so at 1/80 he got f5 rather than f3.5 which the would be equivalent to the above mentioned exposures.

While this might never specifically relate to your style of photography it goes to show it can be used to assist in creative choices, even if it is merely to give you more choices with the other controls. At the end of the day, I still think the crux of the issue is that you can't decide how best to select ISO until you understand how it affects your shooting.

Geez I hope I got all those numbers right... though the point is independent of them!

[chrisk]

While everyone has a different way of using ISO, shoot as low as possible.

i think thats the only way to look at it actually. i'm yet to see an argument to prove otherwise.
nb: lowest iso possible TO GET THE SHOT.

your other example from strobist is the perfect reason why i said in my previous post that i never use auto iso when using flash. for every other purpose though, iso is redundant as far as creativity goes. the creative part of the equation is the metering which drives your iso...not the other way around.

[gstark]

While everyone has a different way of using ISO, shoot as low as possible.

i think thats the only way to look at it actually. i'm yet to see an argument to prove otherwise.
nb: lowest iso possible TO GET THE SHOT.

What about pushing a high ISO into the equation because you might want to have the noise/grain come into your image as an effect that you are wanting to have in your images?

I think that Dawesy's earlier post sums up the discussion rather well, actually.

[kiwi]

Let's not forget that this discussion started when talking about creative choices for a newer photographer

Ive no doubt that the more experienced use ISO as well at S/S and apperture to achieve their required outcome.

Gary, Im not sure that I would deliberately bump ISO to achieve a grainy look. I think Id prefer to control and introdice digital noise, or add grain, in post processing so at least you can start with a clean image

[chrisk]

While everyone has a different way of using ISO, shoot as low as possible.

i think thats the only way to look at it actually. i'm yet to see an argument to prove otherwise.
nb: lowest iso possible TO GET THE SHOT.

What about pushing a high ISO into the equation because you might want to have the noise/grain come into your image as an effect that you are wanting to have in your images?

I think that Dawesy's earlier post sums up the discussion rather well, actually.

sure, i suppose if you;re one of those "i must get everything done in camera" nazi's. i hear that alot about hi-iso shooting intentionally to get grain, but rarely ever see it done that way. id prefer to add things like grain in post personally. similar to a colour tint, vignetting or even softening an image.

[gstark]

Gary, Im not sure that I would deliberately bump ISO to achieve a grainy look. I think Id prefer to control and introdice digital noise, or add grain, in post processing so at least you can start with a clean image

Darren, for me, the issue, and the point, is that all of these options are valid and correct choices.

Chris, while I certainly prefer to try to get it right in the camera - that is just one of many options that I have available to me. I might even shoot both high and low ISO and then I have even greater flexibility with more options available at the end of the day.

[dawesy]

i think thats the only way to look at it actually. i'm yet to see an argument to prove otherwise.
nb: lowest iso possible TO GET THE SHOT.

That's a creative decision to reduce noise.

Moving up the ISO to, say, get a faster shutter speed, is a creative decision. Sure the root of the decision is based in moving the shutter speed, say to freeze motion, but ultimately you have chosen to alter ISO, and to make that decision you need to understand how it works, and how it affects your images on your camera.

your other example from strobist is the perfect reason why i said in my previous post that i never use auto iso when using flash. for every other purpose though, iso is redundant as far as creativity goes. the creative part of the equation is the metering which drives your iso...not the other way around.

Well, 'for every other purpose' isn't every purpose. Someone who primarily shoots flash is going to be making a lot of ISO based creative choices. To that, they need to understand how it affects images in their camera.

Perhaps for many we need to drop the word 'creative'. I can see that in a number of peoples thinking, they feel it doesn't factor into their creativity. However, for others it certainly will. Don't forget this all applies equally to film as well, where ISO has a greater effect. Nonetheless, ISO selection is a decision. You might up it to get a faster shutter to freeze motion, you might want more DOF but need to hold shutter to avoid camera shake, you might just want to shoot higher ISO so you can have you flash at a lower power for faster recycle. Hell, you might even just need to get a faster shutter so that you maintain your 9fps you paid so much to get.

Ultimately, as kiwi has suggested, this started in terms of a new photographer. A new photographer being told variously to shoot at 400 all the time, use Auto, shoot as low as possible etc. As far as any person in that situation I stand by what I already said.

ISO selection is a decision in your photography. You can make that decision a number of ways, but just like a shutter speed choice, just like an aperture choice, it will affect your final image and often, it will affect those choices. You can only make that choice when you understand what ISO changes do and how they effect the images you take with the camera you use.

I'm yet to see any argument to prove otherwise. It's called the exposure triangle for a reason, you can't just ignore one aspect of it.

[dviv]

Chris, while I certainly prefer to try to get it right in the camera - that is just one of many options that I have available to me. I might even shoot both high and low ISO and then I have even greater flexibility with more options available at the end of the day.

That way you can merge the two shots and have a HDN image (high dynamic noise)

[dawesy]

sure, i suppose if you;re one of those "i must get everything done in camera" nazi's. i hear that alot about hi-iso shooting intentionally to get grain, but rarely ever see it done that way. id prefer to add things like grain in post personally. similar to a colour tint, vignetting or even softening an image.

I have actually, though I was shooting in very low light so it could also be said that I did it to get the shutter speed into hand held territory. To be honest I forget where my shutter ended up, in any case, I intended to shoot high ISO before I got there.

Even if it was just for shutter, moving the ISO was part of my creative choice. If I followed the advice to shoot at 400 ISO all the time, my photo's would have sucked. If I was on Auto, maybe it'd be OK, maybe not. As I recall auto requires setting thresholds, and that would have determined what I got. If I just stuck in the thresholds someone else told me, they wouldn't necessarily cover shooting in low light. I could choose to shoot the lowest ISO to get the shot, but then I have to understand ISO don't I?

Which brings me back to...

ISO is a decision. To make it you need to understand it.

Giving any other advice to a new photographer is doing them a disservice. It's like telling a new driver that they should be in 4th gear if they are doing 80ks. Sure, it's good in most situations and will generally work and give good results, but the first time they do 80 up an extreme hill, or tow a boat or....

Anyway, I have beaten this expired equine enough.