Photography course: In the land of the blind…., part 3

I’m the one-eyed Queen in the land of the blind that is called Photography.I’m sure there are many blind people in the Blogland of Photography too. (What can be worse than being a blind photographer?) People who own a fancy camera, but only use the automatic setting(s), because they don’t know about aperture and shutter speed. I used to be one of them. But not any more! I know a thing or two now and am willing to share my limited knowledge with you. We can all be one-eyed Kings and Queens together! World domination will be only a small step further.

The only thing is, I’m not quite sure about all the technical photography terms in English. But I’ll try to make sense anyway. And this course (ahum) is not meant for users of the digital point-and-shoot cameras, although they will probably get some useful information and tips out of this too, but for people who have a digital SLR camera.

If you decide to join us on our quest for world domination becoming a better photographer, please post your photos and notify me that you’ve done so (please include the link to that post). I’d be interested to see if what I’m trying to explain is clear enough. If you have any questions concerning the ‘lessons’ please ask them in the comments section of that ‘lesson’. I’ll answer them there too. You can of course also find lots of websites about photography, written by people who really know what they are talking about, but they will be less fun of course.

 

Part 3: ISO

If you’ve read and followed the tips in lesson 1 and lesson 2 you’ll know about aperture and focus, autofocus and manual focus now. (Since the word ‘lesson’ kept making me giggle and feel slightly awkward, I’ll call it ‘part’ from now on. Makes me feel much better.)

So, aperture (the width of your lens opening) and focus (what is sharp in your photo and what is out of focus) is important to get a good photo. But light is also important. And ‘crispness’. What? Yes. You’ll probably want a crisp shot. Unless you want to be artistic and are going for a grainy effect, which can be beautiful too.

It all has to do with ISO. What used to be ASA when we still used film in our cameras, just after the invention of the wheel.
ISO determines how sensitive the image sensor in your camera is to light. The lower the ISO number, the less sensitive it is to light. The higher the ISO number, the more sensitive it is to light (the easier it picks up light).
In darker circumstances, you can choose a higher ISO number to keep the shutter speed… uhm… up to speed. (See the photos below.)

In well lit circumstances I will always try to use ISO 100. The grain will be fine and the photo looks crisp and clear. The higher the ISO number, the grainier (noisier) your photo will be. You probably won’t notice much difference in ‘noise’ between ISO 100 and ISO 200 or even ISO 400, unless you make a very large print of the photo. But it will make a difference in shutter speed.
Some people always use ISO 400 or even ISO 800. Go figure! It is up to you of course. I’ve done portrait shoots with ISO 1000 (!), which gives a sort of softness to a photo that can be nice for portraits. And I didn’t need to use a flash light. I’m still trying to get to grips with the external flashy thingy for my camera and the internal flashy thingy (you know, the flash light that often pops up when you have the camera on the automatic setting) doesn’t do it for me. Harsh light, short reach (yes, you pros, I know there are options and solutions, but perhaps in another part of this ‘course’ I will come to that). So, for me high ISO is often a good solution.

Grab your camera and the instruction manual and look up how you can adjust the ISO setting. Choose the Av (or A or perhaps even F, depending on the brand) setting on your camera, which allows you to choose the aperture you want and set the ISO to 100. Choose the lowest F number your camera allows you to choose (the widest lens opening) and take a photo. Now, only change your ISO to 800 and take the same photo. Then set your ISO to the highest number possible and take the same photo again. You will firstly notice a difference in shutter speed. Everything else is the same. The aperture, the light circumstances, the subject. Only the sensitivity to light of the image sensor changes. So it will need a longer shutter speed when the ISO number is lower and a much shorter shutter speed if you choose a higher ISO number.

Below are some shots I took to demonstrate the effect of different ISO settings. I took these late afternoon on a dark day. With all the lights in the room on, I still needed the table to put my camera on in order to keep it still enough for a photo with ISO 100, even with the aperture set on F5.6, which is the widest lens opening I could choose.

ISO 100, shutter speed 1.30 sec. (1 whole second and a bit!), F5.6

 

ISO 800, shutter speed 1/6 sec. (just a 6th of a second, so much difference in light sensitivity), F5.6

 

ISO 1600, shutter speed 1/12 sec. (double ISO = twice faster shutter speed?), F5.6

 

If you click on these photos to enlarge them you will probably also notice a difference in crispness of the shots. The ISO 100 shot will be crisper and the ISO 1600 will be much grainier. Or you will just have to believe me on my word.

(I had to switch the lens to manual focus for these shots, because the surface of the apple was too smooth.)

Enough light: ISO 100. Not enough light: higher ISO.
(There are also other things you can do to get enough light for a good shot, but we’ll forget about them for the time being. Perhaps we will talk about them in the next ‘part’.)

Practice different settings, take shots and see what the differences are. You can best see that if you upload the shots onto your computer.

Good luck!

NOTE: the post before this one, about the woodpecker family, is a good example of why you should know about higher ISO. You see, when taking those shots the sun was about to set so it was getting a bit darker. I forgot I could ‘up’ the ISO and just chose a low F-nr. to open the lens as wide as possible and keep the shutter speed fast. But that resulted in a small focus area, which is why there is too much blurriness around. Ah well. Won’t happen again. I hope.