Although I’ve read a good deal about ISO, shutter speed, and aperture (even whole books on one of the subjects), I’ve never read a better explanation of ISO than Darcy has on today’s 31 Days to a Better Photo series. She asked us to take the same photo starting at our lowest ISO and then doubling it while we watched the shutter speed. It’s a very rainy, cold day here, so I opted to take an indoor shot of the vintage Kodak Brownie I picked up a week ago. All the shots were taken at 2.0 aperture with my 50 mm lens. As expected with every increase in ISO there’s a corresponding increase in shutter speed.
ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/10
ISO 200, Shutter speed 120
ISO 400, Shutter speed 1/40
ISO 800, Shutter speed 1/60 (Inside on a gray day, this is the ISO I typically have to use if I want to hand hold my camera, which I did today.)
ISO 1600, Shutter speed 1/100 (With this ISO you typically see a lot of noise, although I don’t seem to be able to distinguish much on the computer. If I were to print this series, it might be much more noticeable.)
I’m enjoying these exercises even though I’ve done similar ones in the past for online courses. Every time I do a series of these, I understand the concepts better.
I know for me it is all about repetition, at times I feel as though I have a concept but the truth is, I just need to keep practicing and then finally the penny drops and off I go on the next learning phase.
A print off would probaly give you more accurate feedback – they all look pretty good on my screen and I can’t really pick the noise.
Karen, I’m going to check out that 31 days to a better photo. I’m having a hard time getting my head around aperture and ISO and stuff like that. It’s probably because numbers just do not register in my head, so when i have to play around with numbers my brain walks out on me. I did understand her explanation, though, so I’m going to go read more. Thanks!
Interesting post. I hate to admit I still don’t get it – lol! And I’ve never been ablemto “see” the nooks I’ve read about.
Rinda
That’s really interesting, thank you – I’m still (very slowly) working on getting my head round all of this myself!
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