**I was totally going to start putting everything together, but then as I was writing this, realized ISO needed a post of its own. Even though it’s not the most exciting thing, it’s important to know about. My next post will talk about how all the factors we have been talking about work together to create an amazing photo.**
Welcome to part four of my photography series, where we will talk about ISO If you missed my other posts, check out parts one, two,and three.
So… What is ISO?
ISO controls your camera’s sensitivity to light. The lower the number the less sensitive your camera (or rather your camera’s sensor). is to light. The higher the number the more sensitive your camera is to light. This is how I, a non-photography person understands ISO. I’m sure someone who really knows their stuff could be more detailed, but that person is not me. 😉
So how does ISO come into play while taking pictures?
Let’s say you want to take a picture with a narrow depth of field (read, everything is in focus). So you set your aperture and shutter speed, but still end up with a picture looking like this:
If you bump up your camera’s ISO, it will be more sensitive to the light, thus helping you gain a properly exposed picture, like this:
Bumping up your ISO does have draw back though, that being noise. The higher up you bump your camera’s ISO, the more noise or grain you will see in your picture. More than likely you won’t really see the noise unless you zoom in, but it still makes for a bit of a less clean picture.
For example, here are two pictures of a box. One with an ISO of 100, and one 6400
**note: the ISO of 100 has a shallow depth of field (i.e. less in focus, which is why the background is blurry).**
It’s hard to see, but when you zoom in the one with an ISO of 6400 looks just a tad more blurry.
I always try to keep my ISO low just to keep my pictures as clean as possible.
Usually I end up bumping up my ISO in low light situations, where I have my aperture wide, but can’t set my shutter speed slow enough to let enough light reach the sensor.
The next lesson we will finally be able to put everything together! 🙂
Thanks for reading, I hope that you have been finding everything helpful to improve your picture taking.