Skip to main content

Choosing the Right ISO for Digital Photography


ISO stands for International Standard Organization, a term which is popular among photographers, young and old. In order to be able to take great pictures, it is important to know about ISO and how choosing the right ISO is important to help click some great pictures. ISO, to put it simply, is the measurement of the sensitivity of film to light. Now that traditional cameras have been replaced with digital cameras, this definition has been slightly modified to mean the measurement of sensitivity of the sensor towards the light. This is especially important if you are trying to get a picture clicked where there is a lot of movement or there is a lack of light which you do not want to impact the pictures.

The purpose of using ISO, as mentioned earlier, is to allow light to filter into the sensor when capturing images which are moving or which have been placed in shade. The higher the ISO, the higher light captured. However, this does not always mean that a higher ISO is a good thing. Normally, it is considered preferable to maintain a lower ISO as with increase in ISO, the noise or graininess of the picture increases which subsequently reduces the clarity and thereby quality of the picture.

As mentioned, ISO is a good option to capture an image which is moving and does not have adequate lighting. However, this might bring up a question as to how this helps as compared to reducing the shutter speed. The problem here lays in the fact that a lower shutter speed requires that the picture is taken using a tripod in order to achieve the optimum result. And if this is not an option, a higher ISO might be the only option available.

Similarly, if you prefer a picture which would be an impressive piece of art with the grained look which higher ISO would provide, then you can go ahead and try that and the outcome could be a picture which is quite different and unique as opposed to the clean, neat pictures that are traditionally taken.
Also, another question to ask while deciding on the ISO setting for you digital camera is whether you would have a secondary device which will be able to provide artificial lighting like a flash. If you have a flash available at your disposal, then it would be better to use it rather than depend on your ISO to get you some good shots.

And most importantly, the one factor that needs to be considered while setting the ISO is the purpose of the picture as well as the factors that require emphasizing in the picture. The best way to capture an image with the right ISO setting will be to play around and experiment your digital camera so that you can understand the impact of each setting separately. Also, in case you decide to change the ISO setting, it would be a good idea to change it back once you are done clicking the pictures so that you don’t end up clicking pictures with the incorrect ISO setting without realizing it.

Popular posts from this blog

ISO Settings in Digital Photography

If you are someone who considers digital photography a form of art rather than a mere clicking of still images, then there are a lot of things that you need to keep yourself informed about before deciding to pursue it. A few of the things you need to keep yourself informed about are the shutter speed, aperture as well as ISO settings which are the more technical aspects of photography as opposed to foreground and background as well as lighting. Because, it is these basics that help enable a photographer to click pictures which are unique and spellbinding irrespective of the camera used. Originally, ISO settings referred to the sensitivity of the camera film to light and how much light could be accommodated without burning or blurring the picture. In order to be able to be measured easily, ISO was traditionally measured in numbers with lower ISO settings being around 100 with higher ISO settings being anywhere around 400 to 800. However, with the advent of time, the traditional
Read More »

ISO: Knowing the Use of the Digital Image

Learning what is ISO is a fairly advanced step towards learning more about the digital files that may fill your computer. It’s not uncommon to think that it’s hard to get into these things, and in fact, it’s a really intimidating task set before you. But with new technology, comes new forms of storage. One of these days, simply knowing how to insert a disc won’t work anymore. So here’s a quick rundown on what you should know about ISOs. What is ISO: The basics An ISO, or an ISO image is basically what is on your disc before it is burned onto a disc. Everything that a disc has, whether a few video files separated by menus, or full installers of software, was originally in an ISO format. It’s basically an archived file, containing all the date that was supposed to go on the disc itself. It’s also in it’s digital format, which means that it is free to be manipulated an altered rather than when it is in it’s permanent state. Why learn what is ISO? Now that you understand w
Read More »

Basic Photography: Camera ISO

In the generation of digital photography, some terms have differed from their film days. The definition of ISO is one of them, having a different need in film photography. So what is ISO? In film, camera ISO used to refer to the light sensitivity of the type of film. The higher the ISO numbers on the film, the high its sensitivity to light. So if you plan to shoot in a dark area, go for the film number with the higher ISO. If that’s for film, what is ISO for digital cameras? It’s still relatively the same. The lower the ISO setting, the lower is its sensitivity to available light. With the higher ISO setting, pictures tend to become grainy because of the amount of light the sensor can process. You can look at other examples online for image samples for ISO settings. Cameras nowadays can have an ISO as far as 3400 or even higher, but you can compare that lower settings can give less graininess or noise in a photograph. For example, what is ISO 800 compared to ISO 100? ISO 100
Read More »