Let's say you are at a concert, museum, or possibly even at your son or daughter's grand debut and you want to take some nice pictures. Unfortunately, the room is pretty dark and flash photography is not allowed. You take some pictures, but the shots keep coming out blurred or out of focus. So what can you do? In this situation, setting your camera to a higher ISO may help you get some better shots.
The way to do this:
As you can see, increasing the ISO helped me take a clearer picture of the candle and pebbles. However, increasing it to 3200 was a little too much because my picture came out quite grainy. In this case, I would stick to using either ISO 800 or 1600.
Remember, changing the ISO can be very useful if there is not enough lighting in your environment and flash is either undesired or not allowed. However, every camera is different and some cameras handle noise better than others at higher ISOs. I recommend that you take some images under low light with different ISOs. Then upload the images to your computer (you may not be able to see the grain from your camera's LCD screen) and determine the highest ISO your camera can handle and avoid passing that ISO.
*Note: In low light situations, and you have a dSLR, you can also use a bigger aperture to try and get a better picture. You can also try to use a slower shutter speed for non-moving subjects if you have a tripod. More on those topics later.
The way to do this:
1. Take your camera out and find the button that says ISO.
2. Press the ISO button and you should see a list of numbers come up (100, 200, 400, etc).
3. Scroll through the numbers and choose the ISO that best fits your lighting situation. Generally speaking, you want to use ISO 100 to 200 when you are taking pictures outdoors and ISO 400 to 800 when you are inside or in the shade.
Be weary of using too high an ISO:
Your camera may allow you to change your ISO to as high at 6400, but beware, because the higher your ISO, the “noisier” your pictures will be (the noise looks like grains on your images). A picture can be worth a thousand words, so I took pictures of a candle and some pebbles in a low light situation to help you understand how changing the ISO will affect your images. See pictures below.
2. Press the ISO button and you should see a list of numbers come up (100, 200, 400, etc).
3. Scroll through the numbers and choose the ISO that best fits your lighting situation. Generally speaking, you want to use ISO 100 to 200 when you are taking pictures outdoors and ISO 400 to 800 when you are inside or in the shade.
Be weary of using too high an ISO:
Your camera may allow you to change your ISO to as high at 6400, but beware, because the higher your ISO, the “noisier” your pictures will be (the noise looks like grains on your images). A picture can be worth a thousand words, so I took pictures of a candle and some pebbles in a low light situation to help you understand how changing the ISO will affect your images. See pictures below.
As you can see, increasing the ISO helped me take a clearer picture of the candle and pebbles. However, increasing it to 3200 was a little too much because my picture came out quite grainy. In this case, I would stick to using either ISO 800 or 1600.
Remember, changing the ISO can be very useful if there is not enough lighting in your environment and flash is either undesired or not allowed. However, every camera is different and some cameras handle noise better than others at higher ISOs. I recommend that you take some images under low light with different ISOs. Then upload the images to your computer (you may not be able to see the grain from your camera's LCD screen) and determine the highest ISO your camera can handle and avoid passing that ISO.
*Note: In low light situations, and you have a dSLR, you can also use a bigger aperture to try and get a better picture. You can also try to use a slower shutter speed for non-moving subjects if you have a tripod. More on those topics later.
