What Is ISO And 3 Ways To Make It Work For You

What is ISO?

Today I am going to explain what ISO is. ISO is one of the three ele­ments that make up the expo­sure tri­an­gle, the oth­er two being Shut­ter Speed and Aper­ture. But today, I am going to give you the basics on what is ISO and 3 ways to make it work for you.

ISO is a bit intim­i­dat­ing to begin­ner pho­tog­ra­phers, but it does­n’t have to be. ISO is just a set­ting that will make your pho­to brighter or dark­er, and your cam­era has a “base” ISO. The base ISO is the low­est ISO your cam­era can go and is usu­al­ly ISO100 on most cam­eras. This base ISO is where you can get the high­est qual­i­ty image with the least amount of noise. If you increase your ISO, the sen­si­tiv­i­ty to light in your cam­era increas­es, result­ing in a brighter pic­ture. With every bump up the ISO, you are dou­bling the bright­ness of your image.

If you decrease your ISO, the sen­si­tiv­i­ty decreas­es, result­ing in a dark­er pic­ture. You increase your ISO when you can’t get light into the cam­era through the shut­ter speed and the aper­ture. I often hear peo­ple say that they can fix the ISO “in post-pro­cess­ing.” Rais­ing your ISO in the cam­era will pro­duce a bet­ter qual­i­ty pho­to, bet­ter than increas­ing your expo­sure in post-pro­cess­ing. Like I always say, “get your best pho­to straight out of the camera!”

Easy enough, right? Well, there are some con­se­quences to using the wrong ISO…If you use too high of an ISO, you can also get grain or “noise” in your image. Essen­tial­ly you want to use the low­est pos­si­ble ISO that you can for any giv­en sit­u­a­tion, but it is okay to up your ISO…and you should­n’t be afraid to do so. (I’m kind of con­tra­dict­ing myself, but you’ll see why!)

What is ISO? Plus 3 Ways To Make it Work For You

Low ISO

The num­ber one way to make ISO work for you is to under­stand how much ISO you need. If there is plen­ty of light in your room, or you are shoot­ing out­side, using a low ISO (100 or 200) is usu­al­ly pos­si­ble. In using this low­er ISO, you min­imise the risk of noise in your photos.

Even in some low light sit­u­a­tions, if using a longer shut­ter speed with a tri­pod, you can use a low­er ISO.

If you are shoot­ing land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy with a tri­pod, you will want to stay as close to your “base” ISO as pos­si­ble to ensure that you have zero grain in the photo.

Mid-ISO

You would shoot a mid-ISO of 400–800 dur­ing a less extreme time of light, say dur­ing the gold­en hour.

High ISO

Many pho­tog­ra­phers are afraid to up their ISO beyond the 800 mark. Don’t be! Cam­er­a’s have improved a lot over the years, and most cam­eras can eas­i­ly shoot and han­dle high­er ISOs. Keep in mind that each cam­era has an opti­mal ISO that you can hit before get­ting too much grain.

You should increase your ISO if there is not enough light to get your shot any oth­er way. If you are shoot­ing at a time of day when there isn’t a lot of light, at a con­cert, or a par­ty. It will bring in a bit of noise, but you should­n’t lose the image’s quality.

There is so much more to cov­er on ISO, but I hope I have giv­en you a basic under­stand­ing of what is ISO and 3 ways to make it work for you. Now I want you to go prac­tice the third way that you can make ISO work for you. I want you to grab your cam­era and push your ISO. Prac­tice find­ing that ide­al high­er ISO for your cam­era, and prac­tice using it. Prac­tice shoot­ing at your cam­er­a’s “base” ISO, the mid-ISO for your gold­en hour shots and the push your ISO in low-light indoor shots.

Have fun, prac­tice and remem­ber that it’s okay to up that ISO! And if you want to learn even more about how ISO plays a role in the expo­sure tri­an­gle, check out The Begin­ners Pho­tog­ra­phy Essen­tials Class and take your pho­tos from snap­shots to pro­fes­sion­al-look­ing pho­tos TODAY!