what does iso mean?

[Derrel]

Okay, who remembers the Weston Speed index, which came out before either ASA or DIN...the Weston Speed was one unit lower than ASA,as I recall. Plato? Dwig?

About five years ago, I met an old photographer in his 90's,and he told me, "I remember shooting my first color film like it was yesterday--it was ASA 6 as I recall."

Just for a joke, I said, "was that Weston Speed or ASA?" and he said, "Wow, I haven''t heard the term Weston Speed in sixty years!"

I remember the guy clearly. I happened to snap a few frames of him with a used 135 f/2 DC I was checking out a the shop.

 

[Plato]

Okay, who remembers the Weston Speed index, which came out before either ASA or DIN...the Weston Speed was one unit lower than ASA,as I recall. Plato? Dwig?

About five years ago, I met an old photographer in his 90's,and he told me, "I remember shooting my first color film like it was yesterday--it was ASA 6 as I recall?"

Just for a joke, I said, "was that Weston Speed or ASA?" and he said, "Wow, I haven''t heard the term Weston Speed in sixty years!"

I remember the guy clearly. I happened to snap a few fame of him with a used 135 f/2 DC I was checking out a the shop.

I remember that it existed but I don't remember a thing about it.

I remember my older brother shooting ASA-10 Kodachrome. By the time that I got an SLR, it was up to a blazing ASA-25, which I stayed with until I abandoned film several years ago.

I used "preset" lenses. With SLRs, you had to manually open the lens so that you could see well enough to focus. Then, before pushing the shutter button, you had to manually close the lens down to the desired shooting aperture. The expensive lenses were "preset" in that you could set a mechanical stop so that you didn't have to look at the lens while you were closing it down. That would save you several seconds in taking the shot.

 

[Derrel]

Yes, preset lenses...my first-ever telephoto lens was a 135mm f/3.5 pre-set...I was just a kid and could not afford an "expensive" auto-diaphragm 135mm lens in Pentax mount. I got pretty good at using one of my fingernails to flick the pre-set stop down ring using an old Russian-made Cosmorex SE 35mm slr. I had a 58mm f/2 with auto-diaphragm, and the pre-set 135/3.5.

What's funny is that now, one of my sometimes diversions is hunting down older manual focus thread-mount lenses that will adapt to modern Canon digital bodies. And now, 30-40 years after pre-set was a good system, it has once AGAIN become a nice feature!!! Some of the early Pentax-branded lenses in pre-set are kind of nice, but they do tend to have very shiny diaphragm blades that sometimes cause a bit of ghosting when shooting right toward the sun.

My most recent pre-set is a cheap Quantaray 500mm f/8 pre-set made in 2006 or so,and still available. Same old two-ring pre-set system they had years ago, nothing different about it.

 

[Plato]

In 1964, I bought a "Honeywell Pentax" Spotmatic that was advertised as "the world's first automatic SLR" because it had the automatic step-down mechanism! The Honeywell name was on the camera because Honeywell was the importer. Including the "kit lens" (50mm f/1.4) it sold for $400, $300 for the camera and $100 for the lens. In the same year, I bought a brand new '64 Chevy Malibu convertible for $2450 so you can guesstimate what the camera would cost in 2009 dollars.

By the way, I still have it and it still works! (I shoot a 12-shot roll once/year just for old times sake.)

 

[RyanLilly]

This and..

Big ISO number make picture more noisy
Small ISO number make picture less noisy

Since when do pictures make noise?! :lmao:

You've never watched a movie?

Don't you mean a "Talkie"?

 

[Dwig]

Okay, who remembers the Weston Speed index, which came out before either ASA or DIN...the Weston Speed was one unit lower than ASA,as I recall. Plato? Dwig?

About five years ago, I met an old photographer in his 90's,and he told me, "I remember shooting my first color film like it was yesterday--it was ASA 6 as I recall."

Just for a joke, I said, "was that Weston Speed or ASA?" and he said, "Wow, I haven''t heard the term Weston Speed in sixty years!"

I remember the guy clearly. I happened to snap a few frames of him with a used 135 f/2 DC I was checking out a the shop.

Yes, I remember Weston numbers, but only from reading older photo books. I'm not quite old enough to have been using hand held meters calibrated in Weston numbers. I've seen some, though.

Weston numbers were 1/3 stop lower than the A.S.A numbers; ASA 100 equals Weston 80.

The old A.S.A (American Standards Association) numbers didn't change for most films when the new testing procedures instituted by the American National Standards Institute took over and changed the "name" of the numbering system from A.S.A. to ASA. They also changed to a dual numbering system that paired the ASA numbers with their DIN equivalents (near equivalents as DIN tested slightly differently than either the old A.S.A group or the newer ANSI) resulting in film marked ASA 100/21. When the ISO took over for both the ANSI and DIN standards the dual marking was still supported though the "ASA" scale has since become universal.

If you're into older FSU (Former Soviet Union) gear you'll encounter their Gost calibrations. Wikipedia has a conversion table for ISO/ASA units to ISO Log/Din units and Gost units.

The old guy's memory, if good, is probably of shooting the original Kodachrome which was ASA 6. When I first encountered Kodachome as a kid (elementary school) it was ASA 10 and there was a new super-fast version called Kodachrome-II at the blistering speed of ASA 25. This latter film was my dad's usual choice and what I cut my teeth on, occasionally taking my own pix with dad's camera while on family trips when I was 8-9 years old. I still remember him reminding me that I was shooting the "new faster film" when I took of camera and shoe mounted external meter to take a picture of the beach in Galvestion TX in the summer of 1960.

 

[Plato]

Okay, who remembers the Weston Speed index, which came out before either ASA or DIN...the Weston Speed was one unit lower than ASA,as I recall. Plato? Dwig?

About five years ago, I met an old photographer in his 90's,and he told me, "I remember shooting my first color film like it was yesterday--it was ASA 6 as I recall."

Just for a joke, I said, "was that Weston Speed or ASA?" and he said, "Wow, I haven''t heard the term Weston Speed in sixty years!"

I remember the guy clearly. I happened to snap a few frames of him with a used 135 f/2 DC I was checking out a the shop.

Yes, I remember Weston numbers, but only from reading older photo books. I'm not quite old enough to have been using hand held meters calibrated in Weston numbers. I've seen some, though.

Weston numbers were 1/3 stop lower than the A.S.A numbers; ASA 100 equals Weston 80.

The old A.S.A (American Standards Association) numbers didn't change for most films when the new testing procedures instituted by the American National Standards Institute took over and changed the "name" of the numbering system from A.S.A. to ASA. They also changed to a dual numbering system that paired the ASA numbers with their DIN equivalents (near equivalents as DIN tested slightly differently than either the old A.S.A group or the newer ANSI) resulting in film marked ASA 100/21. When the ISO took over for both the ANSI and DIN standards the dual marking was still supported though the "ASA" scale has since become universal.

If you're into older FSU (Former Soviet Union) gear you'll encounter their Gost calibrations. Wikipedia has a conversion table for ISO/ASA units to ISO Log/Din units and Gost units.

The old guy's memory, if good, is probably of shooting the original Kodachrome which was ASA 6. When I first encountered Kodachome as a kid (elementary school) it was ASA 10 and there was a new super-fast version called Kodachrome-II at the blistering speed of ASA 25. This latter film was my dad's usual choice and what I cut my teeth on, occasionally taking my own pix with dad's camera while on family trips when I was 8-9 years old. I still remember him reminding me that I was shooting the "new faster film" when I took of camera and shoe mounted external meter to take a picture of the beach in Galvestion TX in the summer of 1960.

It's interesting that fifty and sixty-year old Kodachrome slides still look good but virtually any other film, negative or positive, turns to dog poo in a mere twenty or so years. Godansky and Mannes were absolute geniuses.