more randoms.....

[Southerngal]

When shooting indoors, w/mainly window lighting, should ISO be higher?

 

[jstuedle]

Yes. You will learn to adjust ISO up or down to get the shutter speed/aperture setting for the effect you want. Photography is a combination of trade-offs between the shutter/aperture/ISO settings. They all interact. Let's say you feel you need a shutter speed of 1/125 to stop lil'Johnny on his bike, and the max aperture you have is lets say f/5.6 and ISO is 100 but the meter is telling you the shutter is only 1/30th. You can leave the aperture as is (you can't open it more anyway) and set the ISO 2 stops faster, or at 400 ISO. This will give you the 1/125th shutter you wanted. Lets say you now have the shutter where you want it, but you want more depth of field, or depth of focus. You could set the aperture at f/8 and the ISO at 800, leaving the shutter at 1/125. All are equivalent exposures, but each is trading one benefit/liability for another.

 

[fmw]

No. If you have a low light level you would do well to use a camera support. High ISO introduces noise to the images. A camera support can avoid camera shake while maintaining your camera's best possible image quality. I will agree with John if image quality is not the primary concern but, for me, it usually is. So there isn't always a right or wrong. Many issues in photography are governed by preference, application and intended result.

 

[ksmattfish]

If it will work with the subject/situation I'm all for using a tripod and a lower ISO. I find for some subjects using a tripod really helps in a lot of different ways, even if I've got plenty of light. A tripod won't help stop subject movement though. Sometimes you have to crank the ISO up to get a decent shutter speed for subject movement as well as camera shake.

High ISO noise can be an issue with many digital pns cameras, but if you are using a DSLR you can shoot at a pretty high ISO without getting too much noise. It also depends on the intended output of the photo; for small prints and web use a fair amount of noise won't even show up. There's in-camera and post processing noise removal software too. I shoot handheld indoors at ISO 800 and 1600, use just a little bit of color noise reduction in the RAW conversion, and if the exposure is good I'm amazed at how clean 8"x12" prints look.

If the window is in the composition you may need to set the camera exposure manually, use some + exposure compensation, or use flash. The meter will try to compensate for the extra bright window/outdoors, and may underexpose your subject.