Right ISO for Your Picture

Have you even considered changing the ISO sensitivity on your camera? If you don't know what ISO sensitivity refers to, you may want to consult your camera manual for a base point understanding about that and how it works. In short, changing the ISO setting on your camera changes the sensitivity to light, the lower number that you select the less sensitive to light (and conversely the higher the number the more sensitive it becomes).
Why change ISO?

You may wonder why it is necessary to make change of the ISO sensitivity; in fact, your camera just picked a suitable ISO sensitivity probably the best for your pictures when you are shooting in automatic mode. When you discover the limitation of the automatic mode, you will start to care about what ISO sensitivity should be used when shooting in other modes.

This is useful when you are shooting in different lighting situations - particularly when there is low light and you might not be able to use a flash (you'd bump up your ISO setting in this case), and this is just the beginning why you would want to shoot at higher ISO.


The Inside Story

The only cost of increasing ISO is that as you do it you'll notice that the "noise" or "grain" in your shots also begins to increase. Thus, the rule is simple - choose the lowest ISO possible for smooth and grain-free shots. The latest generation DSLR cameras today has very nice result at ISO 400 and lower sensitivity, you may consider the output are "noise-free" setup. You have start to concern about anything above ISO 400.

We have latest generation cameras today claim their capability for good higher ISO performance, is this just a matter of marketing game? or something to do? The higher ISO capability definitely gives an overall improvement on photography options. Firstly, at the same exposure amount, a smaller aperture can be used, this ensures subjects are in the DOF coverage for sharpness, it also means a higher shutter speed is possible to freeze actions. Most lenses go to their sweet aperture after stopped down 1-2 stops, the higher ISO sensitivity also makes the optimal setup easier. On the other hand, you may use lower speed lens, and thus less investment - Canon, Nikon and all other lenses manufacturers would probably disagree on that .... :P.

Advanced cameras may have state-of-the-art noise reduction program running in camera to reduce noise at higher ISO. And if you shoot RAW format, RAW processor tools may further optimize your image for smooth output. Lastly, there are third-party noise reduction tools in the market; they are effective enough to further tune up your higher ISO images and make them really usable.


Make Sure Yourself

First of first, make sure you know your camera well. If you don't have any idea what you would probably have at higher ISO settings from your camera, I will recommend you run through a series of test shots at various higher ISO setup under environments mostly you would work with. I trial run my Canon 5D, 40D and 400D and assess their higher ISO performance. I understand pretty well what I could expect from these cameras when shooting at various higher ISO configuration. See articles:


Canon EOS 5D - Dark Angel in Digital Photography
Canon EOS 40D for Serious & Everyday Work
Canon EOS 400D Combo for Everyday Snaps


Then, make sure you change ISO that you will need to get in the habit of checking what setting is selected at the start of every photo shoot. Many photographers have been disappointed at the end of a shoot to find that they forgot to check what ISO setting they left their camera on in their last shoot. There is nothing worse than thinking you are shooting at an ISO of 100 only to find you forgot to switch it back from 1600. To help with this always check your ISO setting before starting to shoot - but also try to always switch it back after a shoot.

Now, make sure you got a properly exposure picture! This is the most critical part and it directly impacts the final result even with the right ISO set. A badly exposure picture can just make everything going into a mess, and become unusable even after post-processing noise reduction. How could I make a properly exposure picture? Huh?! .... good question, but this should return to the basic, the best answer is to be given by yourself - learn more about your camera and shoot more!