ISO is a number that represents how sensitive your camera sensor is to light. The higher the ISO number, the higher your camera’s sensitivity, and the less light you need to take a picture. The trade-off is that higher ISOs can lead to degraded image quality and cause your photos to be grainy or “noisy.”
When might you use High ISO?
High ISO is generally well suited to low-light situations, especially when a fast shutter speed or a narrow lens aperture is essential to achieving a creative goal. For example, using a higher ISO setting for hand-held street photography at night allows one to use fast shutter speeds to create bright, sharp images.
My Own Photo using high ISO
This is an example of me using high ISO in a dark room setting.
As you can clearly see this picture has become very grainy. I used an ISO of 6400
ISO controls the amount of light your camera lets in, and therefore how dark or light your photos will be. Here are some top tips to help calculate correct exposure: Low values, such as ISO 100, are best for a sunny outdoor shoot. For shooting at night — or indoors with dim lighting — use an ISO of 1600 or higher.
Higher and Lower ISO
Higher ISO numbers increase sensitivity, making images brighter, but also introduce noise or grain. Lower ISO settings result in darker, cleaner images with less grain.
Higher
High ISO is generally well suited to low-light situations, especially when a fast shutter speed or a narrow lens aperture is essential to achieving a creative goal. For example, using a higher ISO setting for hand-held street photography at night allows one to use fast shutter speeds to create bright, sharp images.
Lower
When you are taking pictures in good lighting conditions, you should use low ISO to avoid noise in the image. This will give you the best quality picture. That’s because a high ISO can lead to noise in your photos, which can be especially visible in dark or low-light situations.
My photos using High ISO
I used a high ISO for this photo you can clearly see this as in the photo below I zoomed in and the photo is grainy
ISO controls the amount of light your camera lets in, and therefore how dark or light your photos will be. Here are some top tips to help calculate correct exposure: Low values, such as ISO 100, are best for a sunny outdoor shoot. For shooting at night — or indoors with dim lighting — use an ISO of 1600 or higher.
Testing different ISOs
ISO – 100
ISO – 200
ISO – 400
ISO – 800
ISO – 1600
ISO – 3200
ISO – 6400
How does a high ISO impact your Photos?
ISO is a number that represents how sensitive your camera sensor is to light. The higher the ISO number, the higher your camera’s sensitivity, and the less light you need to take a picture. The trade-off is that higher ISOs can lead to degraded image quality and cause your photos to be grainy or “noisy.”
This Link above goes into more detail and provides examples of ISO^
When might you want to use a high ISO?
High ISO is generally well suited to low-light situations, especially when a fast shutter speed or a narrow lens aperture is essential to achieving a creative goal. For example, using a higher ISO setting for hand-held street photography at night allows one to use fast shutter speeds to create bright, sharp images.
Brett Weston
Brett Weston seemed destined from birth to become one of the greatest American photographic artists. Born in Los Angeles in 1911, the second son of photographer Edward Weston, he had perhaps the closest artistic relationship with his famous father of all four of the Weston sons.
Intrigued by the many kinds and shapes of kelp he found on the beaches near Carmel, in 1930 Weston began taking close-ups of vegetables and fruits. He made a variety of photographs of cabbage, kale, onions, bananas, and finally, his most iconic image, peppers.
ISO is a number that represents how sensitive your camera sensor is to light.
The higher the ISO number, the higher your camera’s sensitivity, and the less light you need to take a picture.
photo from offline ^
how does a high ISO impact on your photos?
The higher the ISO number, the higher your camera’s sensitivity
higher ISOs can lead to degraded image quality and cause your photos to be grainy or “noisy.”
what’s it meant by visual noise?
everything that is annoying to the eye, from jarring colours to spaces overloaded with home décor objects.
photo from offline ^
low light situations
photo from offline ^
in lowlight situations, its often necessary to raise the IISO, so it is able to get a clear photo. however from increasing the ISO, through is that it introduces noise to a image, which makes it appear grainy.
however if you take a photo in ideal light, you can keep the ISO low in order to avoid introducing noise into the images.
ISO controls the amount of light your camera lets in, so it tells you how light or dark your photos will be. Low values, such as ISO 100, are best for a sunny outdoor shoot. For shooting at night or indoors with dim lighting use an ISO of 1600 or higher. As you increase your ISO number, your photos will grow progressively brighter. For that reason, ISO can help you capture images in darker environments, or be more flexible about your aperture and shutter speed settings.
High/ Low ISO
The lower the ISO number, the more light is needed to properly expose the image. The higher the ISO number, the less light is needed. ISO 200 requires much more light than ISO 6400.
What effect can a High/ Low ISO have on your camera?
The higher the ISO number, the higher your camera’s sensitivity, and the less light you need to take a picture. The trade-off is that higher ISOs can lead to degraded image quality and cause your photos to be grainy or “noisy.” At the lowest (base) ISO setting, your images will have the least amount of noise and the highest dynamic range, giving you the most flexibility in post-processing.
What is meant by visual noise?
Noise in photography can be defined as a random variation in the image signal. Noise can be caused by a number of factors, including poor lighting conditions, high ISO settings, long exposure times, and heat.
When might you want to use a high ISO?
High ISO is generally well suited to low-light situations, especially when a fast shutter speed or a narrow lens aperture is essential to achieving a creative goal. Sometimes a little noise can actually even add character to your images.
My photos
The photos on the right were taken at an ISO of 6400 and shutter speed of 1/20 of a second. This makes the photo look brighter and less textured whereas the photos on the left were taken at an ISO of 100 at 1/20 of a second which gives the photos more dimension if in a lighter room.
ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation) is a number you can change on your camera which adjusts how sensitive your camera sensor is to light.
How does changing ISO affect images?
A lower ISO value means there is less sensitivity to light, so you will need more light to take a good photo, whereas a higher ISO value increases sensitivity to light meaning less light is needed for a photo. However, if ISO is set too high, visual noise can start being introduced into the image which is a grainy effect that if unintentional can lower the quality and effectiveness of your photo.
Examples of different ISO values – there is noticeably more visual noise in the images with a bigger ISO number, which makes them not as high quality
Despite this drawback, higher ISO values are still useful for taking photos where there are low levels of light. If you have ideal lighting conditions, your ISO number should be kept low to avoid introducing visual noise into your photographs. Unlike aperture and shutter speed, ISO is adjusted by pressing the ISO button and then selecting your desired number.
My ISO photos:
For my photoshoot, I took pictures of the same subjects while adjusting the shutter speed and ISO numbers to explore how they affect images.
My ISO photoshoot contact sheet
Below are two images of a scrunched up paper ball, both taken at the same shutter speed but with different ISO numbers.
1/20 sec shutter speed, 100 ISO1/20 shutter speed, 6400 ISO
The first photo is significantly darker than the second because the ISO number is extremely low, which has reduced light sensitivity and caused a darker image. The second photo is much brighter due to a higher ISO number which has increased light sensitivity, as well as beginning to introduce visual noise into the image.
When taking photos, you need to adjust shutter speed, aperture and ISO all together to ensure the lighting is optimal for the effect you are trying to achieve. Fast shutter speeds which let in less light alongside low ISO levels to decrease light sensitivity can cause extremely dark photos, such as the one below.
The same picture of a scrunched up paper ball, but with a fast shutter speed (1/100 sec) and a low ISO number (100) which causes extremely dark lighting
If you over-adjust one aspect while not adjusting another, you can fix the lighting problem but introduce other issues into your photos. For example, in the image below, the shutter speed is still fast (1/100 sec) but the ISO has increased drastically to 6400, which has improved the lighting significantly but also introduced visual noise which has affect the quality of the image.
The same paper ball at the same angle, but with drastically increased ISO. The visual noise introduced combined with a low aperture has made the background super abstract and unrecognisable, which can be used to highlight your subject but if unintentional will hurt the quality of your image
However, with the right amount of adjustment for each aspect (aperture, shutter speed and ISO), you can achieve your desired lighting without harming the image too much in other ways such as visual noise.
f/4.5, 1/8 shutter speed, 400 ISO creates good lighting while minimising visual noise and maintaining the focus on the subjectf/4.5, 1/15 shutter speed, 800 ISO also achieves this effect similarly
Conclusion:
Aperture, shutter speed and ISO all affect the brightness of your image so it is important to adjust each one to make sure your photos are your desired brightness whilst minimising other consequences like visual noise. For example, if you use a low ISO number, you might want to compensate by using a slower shutter speed and larger aperture to achieve optimal lighting.
ISO is the number that represents how sensitive your camera is to light. A lower ISO value means there is less sensitivity to light and more light needed when taking a photo. On the other hand, a higher ISO means there is more sensitivity and less light needed to take a photo. This can affect the visual noise of an image, meaning the graininess of a photograph. High ISO is often used in low light situations, especially when a fast shutter speed or a narrow lens aperture is essential to achieving a creative goal.
The purpose of this shoot is to look at capturing movement using shutter speed and different settings on the camera.
In this shoot we were told to play the role of boxers in order to capture movement.Next we were given three tennis balls to throw in the sky to capture movement and practice focusing on a moving object.
Francesca Woodman
Woodman was an American artist born in 1958 and started taking photos at age 13. Later in life she was well known for her black and white images which many were self portraits where she utilises shutter speed to make the images appear ghostly by obscuring the face and parts of the body. She grew up surrounded by art her father George was a painter and her mother a sculptor. Her brother Charles Woodman grew up to be an electronic artist. Unfortunately, Woodman suffered with mental health conditions and committed suicide at age 22
In this shoot we did took the photos with the same agenda however we wanted to capture movement within the style of Francesca Woodman.
Shutter speed is the amount of time that your camera is letting light in for. The longer that the shutter speed is open for the brighter that the image will be.
If the object or person you are photographing is moving, for example sport photography, you will need to use a high shutter speed, to be able to capture the moving object clearly. Whereas if you use a low shutter speed such as 1/30 the colours of your image will be richer and more light will have been allowed in.
Examples of high shutter speed images
you can tell these images have a high shutter speed as they are moving images but the movement looks still.
Examples of low shutter speed images
and these images are low shutter speed as it has a bit of motion blur on the image.
Francesca Woodman
Francesca Woodman is an example of a photographer who uses slow shutter speed. Many of Woodman’s images were taken in her parents farmhouse in the countryside of Florence Italy. The European art and culture of surrealist art, many photographers such as Man Ray and Claude Cahun have also influenced her work as you can their themes and styles in Woodman’s work.
In the topic of photography Woodman’s importance as an innovator really helped develop photography as during the 1970’s photography was still considered to be less important than painting or sculptures. Francesca Woodman helped pave the way for photography to explore more important themes such as identity, just like Cindy Sherman and Nan Goldin.
Image by Francesca Woodman
My Images
Contact sheet ( slow shutter speed )
Best Images Edited
these photos are good examples of a slow shutter speed as you get a clear sense of the motion blur that is occurring, which you can tell as part of the images are blurry as there is movement happening in the image.
I have made these images monochrome as I think you are able to see the motion blur better as well as making the images more dramatic.
Harold Edgerton
Harold Edgerton is a great example of fast shutter speed photography. Edgerton was born in Nebraska in 1903. The flash that Edgerton had used to create his most famous image of the bullet through the apple, was 1/100,000 of a second.
Many of his images have been featured in magazines such as “Life Magazines”, and when taking his multi-flash this strobe light could flash up to 120 times in a second. In 1934 Edgerton was appointed a professor of electrical engineering at MIT.
Harold Edgerton / MIT / 1964
My Images
contact sheet ( fast shutter speed)
Best Images Edited
these are some of my best images for fast shutter speed as you cant see any movement in the images. I particularly like the one of the yellow ball as the colour of the ball really compliments with the the colour of the tree. As well as the different tones that are on the ball from the shadows.
ISO
ISO is one of three main pillars of the photography triangle along with shutter speed and aperture. ISO refers to the light sensitivity of the camera, so the higher the ISO the higher the light sensitivity, So if you were shooting on a dark cloudy day you would want to use ISO 1600 or higher. The lower the ISO the less grainy / “noisy” the image will be, however sometimes grain on images is sometimes used for artistic design or dramatic effect. You want your ISO to be as low as possible whilst still freezing the action.
If you’re using a high ISO, in turn there is a possibility that the quality of your image can degrade.
Examples
Here are some examples of high and low ISO from my own images
These images have ISO that ranges from ISO 100 to ISO 3200
