Question about ISO

[Rifleman]

Can someone please explain to me how exactly ISO settings should be used?

ISO (ASA in the film days) was used as a way to express the "sensitivity to light" of the emulsion on the film you were using to capture each image.

[machineman9]

I think I will leave it on automatic settings  

A lot of good information... But I think it seems much more complicated than it needs to be for someone of my photographying standards.


I believe the Tamron 70-300mm lens I have is f4-5.6 or so says Google.

[Omag 2.0]

Perfect explanation there Ken!

Simple rule in digital photography... the higher the iso, the more abundant the noise is. Always use the lowest iso that gives you acceptable shuttertimes...

[machineman9]

Well on mine it says the shutter speed can range from 30 seconds down to 1/4000 second.

I would have said that be an extremely high ISO, but it only goes up to 1600... So probably just a different feature.


But yeh, try and get it as low as I can before it starts to effect the quality of the photos!  ;)

It's fun, this picture taking thing!  ;D

[Hagar]

I don't know how easy it is to use the manual settings on that Coolpix S500. I'm familiar with  the basics but would never consider myself a proper photographer like Ken, Omag or Mic. When in doubt I stick to Auto as I reckon the camera knows more about it than me. To give you some idea of the effects of ISO settings this was taken on my Canon 350D while trying out a new lens.



It was almost pitch dark & I used the Fully Automatic Landscape preset. The actual settings were f 5.6 at 1/15 seconds & 400 ISO. You can see the amount of noise in the black clouds. This looks worse than it is on the original because of resizing & compression.

[Wii]

[quote]Well on mine it says the shutter speed can range from 30 seconds down to 1/4000 second.

I would have said that be an extremely high ISO, but it only goes up to 1600... So probably just a different feature.


But yeh, try and get it as low as I can before it starts to effect the quality of the photos!

[machineman9]

I will, thanks.

Yeh I've seen a fair few of those images... Mostly ones of the motorways. But yeh, all good

3 weeks to go aha.

[beaky]

FWIW at this point: withdigital cameras, I have found that being able to simulate only shutter speed and ISO changes doesn't do much good unless you can also adjust aperture (f-stop).

I don't know why they bothered having ISO and shutter speed control on my camera (Canon SD1100); it's an awesome little camera, but pretty useless in "manual" mode because of this (lack of aperture control).  It has some utility in that mode, but it's extremely limited.