Is the goal to have the lowest ISO possible

[JerryLove]

Gees, some people in forums get so side tracked and carried away

The question being .... Is the goal to have the lowest ISO possible.

For me personally, yes it is.

So, to be clear: you would shoot at ISO 50 (with higher noise) rather than ISO 100 (with less noise) because it's "a lower ISO"?

I suspect that the goal for most of us is to have the best picture possible. In the case of ISO we are trying to get the best exposure simultaneously with the lowest noise. That means I want ISO 100 with perfect exposure. It means I'd rather go to ISO 200 than ISO 50. It means I'd rather get 200 with perfect exposure than 100 with imperfect.

For BIF's I shoot at ISO 200-400, on a perched bird I shoot at ISO 100-200, exactly the same as motor sports, fast action and stationary. The lenses are all used wide open only and the shutter speed is as fast as possible, but the ISO is as low as I can get. Others will have different subjects and needs, so we are all different, but I prefer a very low ISO for the subjects I take.

Would you give up needed DoF? What about allow motion blur to kill your focus?

Since you brought the rest of the triangle into play: I would say that , like the rest of us, you are balancing to get your true goal: the best shot.

 

[nzmacro]

Gees, some people in forums get so side tracked and carried away

The question being .... Is the goal to have the lowest ISO possible.

For me personally, yes it is.

So, to be clear: you would shoot at ISO 50 (with higher noise) rather than ISO 100 (with less noise) because it's "a lower ISO"?

I suspect that the goal for most of us is to have the best picture possible. In the case of ISO we are trying to get the best exposure simultaneously with the lowest noise. That means I want ISO 100 with perfect exposure. It means I'd rather go to ISO 200 than ISO 50. It means I'd rather get 200 with perfect exposure than 100 with imperfect.

For BIF's I shoot at ISO 200-400, on a perched bird I shoot at ISO 100-200, exactly the same as motor sports, fast action and stationary. The lenses are all used wide open only and the shutter speed is as fast as possible, but the ISO is as low as I can get. Others will have different subjects and needs, so we are all different, but I prefer a very low ISO for the subjects I take.

Would you give up needed DoF? What about allow motion blur to kill your focus?

Since you brought the rest of the triangle into play: I would say that , like the rest of us, you are balancing to get your true goal: the best shot.

Can't really do much about that there because those are what I use DOF doesn't interest me at all with bird and motor sports shots, as I said I always shoot the lenses wide open at the lowest ISO I can get. Why do you think my exposures are wrong ??. Why would motion blur kill my focus when the exposure for the subject in action is correct.

As I said in my post ............

"Others will have different subjects and needs, so we are all different, but I prefer a very low ISO for the subjects I take."

Its that simple

Danny.

 

[Derrel]

I shot some pics recently at around 6:15 to 7:15 PM. The light level was continuously dropping. My son and I were in an area of open shade around 7:00 PM (I now see the clock is set to Standard Time in my camera!), as the sun was dropping down to the mountains to the west through an area of low,heavy, gray rainclouds. Only a few rays of sunlight penetrated the clouds. I was shooting at ISO 400. I wanted some depth of field for this portrait, so I would NOT have his arms really blurry and out of focus, and creating distracting foreground bokeh. I used an f/stop of f/6.3, and a speed of 1/125 second.



This B&W conversion used The Ultimate Fighter preset, to which I then applied a Green Filter effect, to make the green and darker green colors in his hooded sweatshirt look tonally "right" in B&W.

I then applied a Sepia Effect to that, and added a heavy vignette, to make this look like an old photo I have seen of my son's grandfather, when he was the same age as my son is.



Basically, this shot was made possible because the ISO level is at 400: that gave me a small enough f/stop, f/6.3 AND it ensured I had a good, fast shutter speed of 1/125 second for a hand-held shot free of camera shake.

 

[bribrius]

its the green filter effect I get stuck on. I play with them, look them over. can never decide and can never seem to take a photo and automatically plan on a filter effect. bw and sepia, seem more obvious. start looking at filter effects on bw or versions of bw tints I get a little dumbfounded even in post trying it there. im still on the level of deciding if lowkey, highkey, or high contrast or normal bw are valid options in bw photos.
1. does it want to be color or bw? if I make it through that without just shooting it color because I cant decide
2. does it want to be high contrast, low key or high key? if I make it through that..
3. can I get a better effect using just certain colors and picking one in the wheel that the frame doesn't have any of that color in it?
4. should I just shoot it standard bw?
And if I get through all these options, and check the in camera exposure contrast settings if I decide to go total manual.
then I get to the filter effects, hahahahahaha.
by then so much time went by I totally lost interest in taking the photo at all.
if I manage to still take the photo it starts over looking at it again in post, with all the fifty or so bw options on tints...

 

[bribrius]

be nice to look at something and know exactly what im going to do with it and how before I hit the shutter release. But im not that good yet. so o.p. once you get past the iso there is a ton more to consider for options...

 

[JerryVenz]

Derrel, NICE JOB!

Now you're venturing into my territory although I would use F4.0 for this pose to really smear the background.

This is the time of day we usually do environmental portraits so we always start at ISO 400 and then go to ISO 800 and up to ISO 1600 for kids in action.

I NEVER GO BELOW ISO 400 when outside. As long as I can produce 40" and 50" gorgeous wall prints that our clients pay us THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS FOR why should I?

Of course to do this you must have a REAL PRO CAMERA with.....a FULL-FRAME SENSOR and at least 20MP---the Brand does not matter.

So, NO the GOAL is not to use the lowest ISO--the GOAL is to be able to make the largest saleable print from files created at the f-stop you need for the depth-of-field you want in the lighting conditions you prefer.

 

[JerryLove]

Gees, some people in forums get so side tracked and carried away


Can't really do much about that there because those are what I use DOF doesn't interest me at all with bird and motor sports shots, as I said I always shoot the lenses wide open at the lowest ISO I can get. Why do you think my exposures are wrong ??. Why would motion blur kill my focus when the exposure for the subject in action is correct.

So you would be happy with the DoF on the highest f-stop value as well? Or do you care about DoF?

You do actually shoot at ISO 50 then?

Motion blur would kill your focus by blurring your non-static subject. Drop your shutter speed to 1/15sec and let me know how that racecar looks.

 

[Derrel]

Thanks Jerry. I agree about ISO 400. About 10 years ago, I got the then-hot-new-thing, the Fuji S2 Pro d-slr...6MP sensor that up-sampled everything to 12 MP in the camera, then DOWN-rezzed images to one of multiple sizes for SOOC images, OR made "12 megapixel" raws...that camera had pretty good, low-noise up to ISO 400...while at that time, Nikons were much noisier...I grew up on Tri-X B&W, so to me, 400 ISO in digital seemed like the best solution overall. I dunno...there's a weird and to me, strange obsession/fear/loathing of "noise" among younger people, most of whom got started in photography with digital. i did post after post about using ISO 400 on my FUji forum, but most people preferred base ISO of 200 on that camera. Me? I want that extra "stop" of f/ or speed!

For several years in the early days of the d-slr revolution, I read post after post of C&C where people saw, or said they saw "noise". Always comments about "noise". I think having grown up viewing MANY hundreds of thousands of film-shot images made between 1930 and 1985, many of us got used to seeing pictures based on their CONTENT, despite film grain, and so, we've been conditioned to think about the "image", more so than the digital noise structure. I dunno...for me, I don't mind "noise" that much, so to me, ISO 400 with this camera is good...and it's good with lesser cameras with worse sensor performance as well. I think there is a VERY un-helpful over-worrying about noise caused by a bit of ISO boost throughout much of the digital photography world.

My camera has a good sensor that is fine up to ISO 1,250 or so. I see the newest-generation FF cameras from Canon and Nikon can shoot pretty good at up to ISO 4,000 or so, but the detail does go down to where it looks about like 35mm Tri-X in B&W or 35mm VPS 160.

 

[Gavjenks]

Personally I'd say about max ISO 400 for crop, ISO 800 for full frame before it starts interfering too much with detail.
But it is a smoothly sliding scale, not a sudden cliff, so of course individual preference will vary.

Unless of course you absolutely must get a shot, and you absolutely must go over those thresholds in order to not get much worse problems (motion blur).

"maximum" rules of thumb only apply in situations where you have the luxury of choosing different settings or a different shot. If you don't, then there is no maximum.

 

[bribrius]

Personally I'd say about max ISO 400 for crop, ISO 800 for full frame before it starts interfering too much with detail.
But it is a smoothly sliding scale, not a sudden cliff, so of course individual preference will vary.

Unless of course you absolutely must get a shot, and you absolutely must go over those thresholds in order to not get much worse problems (motion blur).

"maximum" rules of thumb only apply in situations where you have the luxury of choosing different settings or a different shot. If you don't, then there is no maximum.

you lost me here. if I shoot iso 400 in the dark and iso 400 in lighter situations im going to end up with two different levels of visible noise in the final photo. even the iso level isn't a fixed noise amount.

I don't even understand people that say "I don't go over iso 1600 because of noise".
fixing a certain number on it, I don't follow that methodology. seems more about what works for the lighting and how much noise is going to show up in the photo. If you say "after x number " noise CAN become a concern. I get that. still means you can push it past x on a case by case basis and not significantly hurt the photo.

and I go over 400 all the time.

 

[nzmacro]

Gees, some people in forums get so side tracked and carried away


Can't really do much about that there because those are what I use DOF doesn't interest me at all with bird and motor sports shots, as I said I always shoot the lenses wide open at the lowest ISO I can get. Why do you think my exposures are wrong ??. Why would motion blur kill my focus when the exposure for the subject in action is correct.

So you would be happy with the DoF on the highest f-stop value as well? Or do you care about DoF?

You do actually shoot at ISO 50 then?

Motion blur would kill your focus by blurring your non-static subject. Drop your shutter speed to 1/15sec and let me know how that racecar looks.

I have no idea where you get all this from. The simple answer is that I shoot at the lowest possible ISO I can and I've posted my ISO's that I use above. That was the original question and as said, for me personally (note the word personally), I shoot as low an ISO as I can get. You have no idea of what lighting conditions I shoot in, no idea of my lens apertures, focal lengths and no idea of my shutter speeds, heck you don't even know what focusing system I use for all those blurry shots I take, LOL, why do you assume anything.

Again this is personally, DOF does not interest me with the lenses I use. Others it probably does.

No good trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill No idea why you go on about shooting motor sports at 1/15 second. Why would I do that when I can use a low ISO of 100-400 and fast shutter speeds ?? Not even sure why you go on about and ask if I use ISO 50. I use the lowest ISO I can for the subjects I take which BTW, was the original question.

All the best and off shooting today at ISO 100-400 ;-)

Danny.

 

[Gavjenks]

you lost me here. if I shoot iso 400 in the dark and iso 400 in lighter situations im going to end up with two different levels of visible noise in the final photo. even the iso level isn't a fixed noise amount.

Whether the WORLD is dark is irrelevant. Noise is more visible in lower EXPOSURE areas. And since you meter for exposure no matter where you are, it should be about the same in any setting. Unless you're making an artistic choice to make a dark scene look especially dark (which for example most people do for an outdoors night landscape, but NOT for just dark indoor lighting), or intentionally shooting a high key or low key portrait or whatever.

But if so, it's your artistic choices to over or under expose the scene making the difference, not the physics of the world or time of day. A "correctly" exposed (i.e., neutral lightness on average, camera's auto default) image will have about the same noticeable noise in it on average regardless of conditions, at a given ISO.

 

[Derrel]

I will say just reiterate my thoughts about the OP, which was, "Is the goal to have the lowest ISO possible?". My opinion? There is FAR TOO MUCH hemming and hawing and fussing about "noise" in today's digital imaging world. Modern d-slr cameras have a decent range of USEFUL ISO values, from their lowest or Base ISO setting, up to at least two full EV values higher, and on many cameras, also a "Lo" or "Low"or "Extended" setting that is usually at least one full EV lower than Base ISO. If the scene is exposed properly, or close to properly, the PICTURES made within that entire range of ISO settings will be quite acceptable as far as noise, resolution,color, and a usable dynamic range.

Do not worry about always using the absolute lowest of the low-low ISO settings if it interferes in any way with GETTING THE PICTURES you want to make! If using ISO 100 means settling for a too-slow shutter speed, and causing shots to be blurred, or if it means the aperture needs to be opened up to maximum, so the lens shoots like crap...then your entire effort was wasted in the pursuit of "low ISO".

I look at "the pictures"...I do not obsess on searching out or focusing on minute quantities of noisy areas in my photos or those of others. So, again, "Is the goal to have the lowest ISO possible?" YES, the goal is to have the lowest ISO that will make the photos turn out properly! The goal is not the lowest ISO per se, but the best photographic results.

 

[Gavjenks]

Do not worry about always using the absolute lowest of the low-low ISO settings if it interferes in any way with GETTING THE PICTURES you want to make!

I dunno, I'd change that to "if it interferes 'too much' to conveniently get the pictures you want."

For example, given the choice between taking 30 seconds to set up a tripod if I have one with me already and then shooting various photos in that scene at ISO 100 versus hand holding at ISO 6400, I'm probably going to choose the former in most cases, even though the ISO is "interfering" a bit.

It's just a question of how much it is interfering. If those 30 seconds would cause you to lose the shot, or if the restrictions of a tripod would limit your ability to find the best angle, then don't do it. Either way, your choice DOES matter.



When I talk about a threshold like 800 ISO, what I mean is basically just that I wouldn't think twice about any numbers below that, whereas for numbers above that I will start considering stabilization options or switching to a faster lens or whatever. And may or may not take those options, but will consider them.

 

[bribrius]

Do not worry about always using the absolute lowest of the low-low ISO settings if it interferes in any way with GETTING THE PICTURES you want to make!

I dunno, I'd change that to "if it interferes 'too much' to conveniently get the pictures you want."

For example, given the choice between taking 30 seconds to set up a tripod if I have one with me already and then shooting various photos in that scene at ISO 100 versus hand holding at ISO 6400, I'm probably going to choose the former in most cases, even though the ISO is "interfering" a bit.

It's just a question of how much it is interfering. If those 30 seconds would cause you to lose the shot, or if the restrictions of a tripod would limit your ability to find the best angle, then don't do it. Either way, your choice DOES matter.



When I talk about a threshold like 800 ISO, what I mean is basically just that I wouldn't think twice about any numbers below that, whereas for numbers above that I will start considering stabilization options or switching to a faster lens or whatever. And may or may not take those options, but will consider them.

okay. understand what you are saying now. we pretty much all think the same way id fathom to guess.