The Biggest Of Noobs - ISO 6400

[Zerg3r]

So I have been taking pictures and starting to get most of the basics down but I realized I was doing something really badly which was I always had my ISO on 6400 and had the shutter speed really high as well. I was doing this initially to take pictures of hummingbirds and try to have their wings be still in the photograph as well as their body instead of their wings being blurred. I never took the ISO off 6400 though and left the shutter speed relatively high. I never noticed that there was more noise in the photo's and I still hardly notice it now but I'm guessing it's bad/ obvious for others? I was wondering how else to get this effect if its possible to do it without so much noise and also what do others typically have their settings around (or is that a dumb question because it varies per picture?). Here's an example of the hummingbird photo's I was talking about https://www.flickr.com/photos/126073823@N04/14622469055/ . A second thing I realized when reading through this forum and on Flickr last night was that everyone seems to set the camera to manual where I didn't. I typically keep my camera on Tv, I was wondering if this was bad and if I should be using the camera constantly on fully manual? I hope this all makes sense and if not feel free to ask me to clarify.
Thank you all in advance!

 

[Braineack]

1/640 is a min. shutter speed ill use for birds.

I typically start at 1/1250 on only go slower if they are stationary; espeically if I was trying to capture a hummingbird.


adding noise/grain in post is easy.


manual mode + auto ISO makes more sense to me shooting birds.

pick a fast shutter, a sharp aperture, and let the camera nail exposure using ISO.

 

[robbins.photo]

So I have been taking pictures and starting to get most of the basics down but I realized I was doing something really badly which was I always had my ISO on 6400 and had the shutter speed really high as well. I was doing this initially to take pictures of hummingbirds and try to have their wings be still in the photograph as well as their body instead of their wings being blurred. I never took the ISO off 6400 though and left the shutter speed relatively high. I never noticed that there was more noise in the photo's and I still hardly notice it now but I'm guessing it's bad/ obvious for others? I was wondering how else to get this effect if its possible to do it without so much noise and also what do others typically have their settings around (or is that a dumb question because it varies per picture?). Here's an example of the hummingbird photo's I was talking about https://www.flickr.com/photos/126073823@N04/14622469055/ . A second thing I realized when reading through this forum and on Flickr last night was that everyone seems to set the camera to manual where I didn't. I typically keep my camera on Tv, I was wondering if this was bad and if I should be using the camera constantly on fully manual? I hope this all makes sense and if not feel free to ask me to clarify.
Thank you all in advance!

Ok, well first things first, if your are getting the shots you want then no, no setting is "bad". Myself I usually use either Shutter Priority or Aperture Priority probably 90+ % of the time, I rarely use manual. It's not that I can't use manual, it's just that for my style of shooting and the equipment I use it's generally more trouble than it's worth. I find it works well when I have time to setup and manipulate all the settings, but normally I don't really have that kind of time, I need to be able to fire "from the hip" as it were so in general I find shutter priority the most useful, aperture priority probably a close second and manual mode only gets used on rare occasions.

Frankly anyone who tells you that you should "always" do this or that is probably giving you bad advice. The reason there are so many different settings and options available on a modern DSLR is so that you can use them to adapt to the shooting situation you happen to be in at the moment. That's not to say that manual mode is bad or doesn't have it's uses - certainly if I were shooting under more controlled conditions and had time to properly prepare a shot I'd probably use it a lot more than I do - but I don't find myself in those kind of shooting situations that often so I don't use it much personally.

As to noise, the best way to spot it is to view the picture at "actual pixel" size. Most computer software will automatically adjust the picture size to fit your screen, and as a result you won't really see much noise in a lot of photos that way. However if you expand the picture so it is being viewed at the size at which it was actually photographed, that's when you'll start to notice the noise. There are a lot of software programs out there that will help filter out some of that noise.

 

[jaomul]

The example on your link is iso3200. Use what works for you. Now that you know what to look out for you will improve. Nice shot btw

 

[dennybeall]

Many people will use Aperture fixed mode if they want to force the depth of field either deep or shallow. They will use a fixed shutter speed to either stop action or have blur on purpose such as moving water. In both cases to give the camera the ability to meet the light needed for the shot they will set the ISO to AUTO. The camera will start where the ISO is set and then vary the variable (aperture or shutter speed) until it runs out of stops and then start changing the ISO until the needed amount of light is reached.
I will do that unless I want to just play with a shot and will go to manual and fiddle with everything.
Most of the time I personally prefer manual with manual ISO unless it's a job where "get the shot at any cost" is important then AUTO ISO with shutter or aperture priority.

 

[Zerg3r]

Awesome thank you everyone! So it looks like it kind of comes down to preference. I'll definitely start playing around with the other settings instead of shutter speed and ISO so often, thank you all again! This will help me a ton.

 

[Braineack]

did you take it on a webcam?

 

[Zerg3r]

^^ So I'm guessing it sucks, thank you!

 

[Overread41]

Hummingbird wings move insanely fast, so you've a few options to consider;

1) Faster shutter speeds - that means more ambient light - wider apertures (smaller f number) and higher ISOs. This is basically what you've already been doing.

2) Flash. This method is likely the best if you want a crisp sharp shot of the wings in motion totally still. What this works on is by having the ambient light contributing nothing to the shot; that is to say without the flash you'd have a totally underexposed (black) photo.
From there you use a flash (or several) to control the exposure and if you're using a speedlite flash the pulse of light that comes from it is super fast. And because that light is the only light contributing to the photo you get that split second effect as if you'd used a fast shutter speed.
For hummingbirds I'd suggest:

Aperture - whatever you want, but if you're at distance don't be surprised if you need f8 to get the depth of field you want
ISO - low - such as ISO 100
Shutter speed - your cameras sync speed (fastest it can shoot with a speedlite flash without using high-speed-shutter mode*) Typically around 1/200sec or 1/250sec

Flash - now here its a bit more complicated. First off at its simplest the duration of the light from the flash increases with the power of the flash setting; whilst similarly a weaker setting will be considerably faster. So you don't want it running at 1/1 - ergo full power. You'll have to experiment a bit to find what power creates the degree of action freezing that you desire - note of course that if you're decreasing the flash power you might need to use more than one flash. Further if you want a good level of lighting you might be using a softbox or umbrella to diffuse the lighting so again you'll need more light (flash units) to make up for that.

Experiment and see how well it goes with one and at different power levels.


*HSS works by letting the camera use a faster than normal sync speed shutter speed; but pulses the light from the flash into a series of bursts (far too fast for your eye to see so you just see it as one flash). If you're freezing action with this you'd see this as a series of points of motion in the shot rather than a single.

 

[WayneF]

So I have been taking pictures and starting to get most of the basics down but I realized I was doing something really badly which was I always had my ISO on 6400 and had the shutter speed really high as well. I was doing this initially to take pictures of hummingbirds and try to have their wings be still in the photograph as well as their body instead of their wings being blurred. I never took the ISO off 6400 though and left the shutter speed relatively high. I never noticed that there was more noise in the photo's and I still hardly notice it now but I'm guessing it's bad/ obvious for others? I was wondering how else to get this effect if its possible to do it without so much noise and also what do others typically have their settings around (or is that a dumb question because it varies per picture?). Here's an example of the hummingbird photo's I was talking about https://www.flickr.com/photos/126073823@N04/14622469055/ . A second thing I realized when reading through this forum and on Flickr last night was that everyone seems to set the camera to manual where I didn't. I typically keep my camera on Tv, I was wondering if this was bad and if I should be using the camera constantly on fully manual? I hope this all makes sense and if not feel free to ask me to clarify.
Thank you all in advance!

Hummingbird pictures are typically taken with a speedlight flash. Speedlight flash at low power has extremely fast durations, like 1/20,000 second, even 1/40,000 second in some cases of lowest power level. Faster than any possible shutter speed (shutter speed is like 1/200 second to sync with the flash, but shutter merely has to be open when the flash triggers). These pictures are taken in shade or dim light (underexposed ambient), so the continuous ambient light does not blur motion that the speedlight stopped.

hummingbird flash pictures - Google Search

Manual camera mode is good with flash indoors, when the ambient is relatively dim and simply does not matter much. Or manual camera is convenient if exposure compensation is planned (the meter is NOT centered).

Outdoors, if we always simply center the meter in manual mode, there is no advantage, we might as well let camera auto modes (aperture or shutter preferred) center it. It does not matter WHO centers it.

 

[Zerg3r]

Thank you very much! This is awesome information, I'll be sure to look into what you guys said and try it myself if I get the chance .

 

[JosephW]

did you take it on a webcam?

Ignore this guy, that's incredibly ignorant of him.

We all make mistakes man, hell, if it makes you feel any better, I shot at f/4 for months and months until I realised I was losing dramatic sharpness and deep DoF. It's all expected, just consider it a 'bump in the road to professional photography'.

 

[Solarflare]

did you take it on a webcam?

Ignore this guy, that's incredibly ignorant of him.

We all make mistakes man, hell, if it makes you feel any better, I shot at f/4 for months and months until I realised I was losing dramatic sharpness and deep DoF. It's all expected, just consider it a 'bump in the road to professional photography'.

Um.

I am confused how f/4 makes you lose sharpness ?

That should be pretty close to the sharpness maximum of the majority of glas on the majority of current cameras.

Unless of course you are a landscape photographer and need a lot of depth of field.

 

[Braineack]

did you take it on a webcam?

Ignore this guy, that's incredibly ignorant of him.

We all make mistakes man, hell, if it makes you feel any better, I shot at f/4 for months and months until I realised I was losing dramatic sharpness and deep DoF. It's all expected, just consider it a 'bump in the road to professional photography'.

ignoring that statement and not taking note of the underlying implications from it is, literally, ignorant.

the photo is bad in every way, including but not limited to:
composition/framing
subject matter
lighting
quality
technique


the photo, that comment was in reference to, was removed and post edited to remove the question asking about it. It looks like a webcam photo if you click here and look for yourself.

That comment said everything that needed to be said about everything that was wrong with it without having to write it out.

 

[Zerg3r]

^^ You are entirely right and I should have specified/ clarified that because of how bad the picture was I took it down. I'm sorry to have created the confusion. Thank you all again for your time and help.