My Digital Camera ISO Experiment

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Following on from Wednesdays post about digital camera ISO I thought it would be good to stop talking about it and give it a go.

So I did, but seeing as I didn’t have any low light shooting opportunities coming up I decided to use my mouse as a substitute.

The photograph on the top is taken using the 100 ISO setting on my camera and the photograph on the bottom is taken using the 200 ISO setting on my camera. And these are the only two options I have for ISO besides the auto setting where the camera will automatically decide which is the best between the two.

Results…

I took the shots using a mini desktop tripod and no flash. Which really gave the camera a good workout because it was really low light!

There isn’t a huge difference between the two photographs but there is some, and taking into account that I don’t have much ISO range on my camera anyway, I think it is quite a good result. What I wanted to achieve was to see the difference (if any) between the ISO settings on my camera. They show that using a camera’s ISO settings in low light with no flash is a realistic option and one I will experiment with further.

It will be great for when flash photography isn’t allowed, like concert or school performances. And I can see that there will be slightly different effects with each settings depending on what I want to do with the photograph. Looks like fun!

Mandy

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What is Digital Camera ISO?

Back in the old days when I had a film camera, ISO was to do with the film and it’s speed. I generally used ISO 100, 200 and 400, for bright conditions, cloudy conditions and all round conditions respectively.

It’s a little different with digital camera ISO

What is digital camera ISO?

Digital ISO gives an indication of the sensitivity of the camera’s image sensor (what would be a comparison to film).

And can be adjusted depending on how much light is entering the camera. Which sounds a little like EV compensation to me, but it isn’t!

The lower the camera’s ISO the better the image quality of the photographs.

The higher the ISO setting the more chance there is of the image having digital noise (depending on your image sensor).

So what is noise?

Briefly it occurs when the ISO has been set high and therefore the image sensor is very sensitive to the amount of light coming into the camera, but also sensitive to anything else as well. And that results in noise or ‘dots’ appearing in the image.

The size of the image sensor in your camera is directly related to it’s ISO speed range and how large it can be. It can go as low as 50 or up into the 1,000’s, each camera will have it’s own range. Point and shoots only have small sensors so a high ISO will cause noise. Where as DSLR camera’s have large sensors so noise is not so much of a problem and higher ISO’s can be achieved.

Why would I use it?

If you are in a low light situation where you want to take a picture but can’t get the right exposure because you can’t use a flash, then using a higher ISO to get the right exposure for the picture is the best option, and will let you take the picture.

This can increase the risk of noise in the image. But I would take the photograph anyway because you can use post production software to remove most of the noise afterwards.

Digital cameras will have an auto ISO setting as well, and the camera will automatically select a higher ISO when light conditions are low, but you may want to adjust this.

My Camera

My camera has an auto ISO setting and a choice of 100 and 200 ISO settings. So the auto setting will decide between the two in low light if I don’t choose one myself.

Mandy

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