Forums / Marine Systems and Husbandry – by Anthony Calfo / Archived Forums / Aquarium Photography / Camera play2: ISO / Latest Posts

RE: Camera play2: ISO

Anthony Calfo — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 11:05:49 GMT

please do continue to document them, my friend... these are excellent tutorials for fellow hobbyists aspiring to image better.

RE: Camera play2: ISO

Spracklcat — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 10:50:46 GMT

This is a tremendous help! I have found that working in digital over film (I was a late convert) is that your learning curve is so much quicker in digital because you can look at your results right away rather than waiting for film to come back. I remember being a child and sitting in a chair for my dad holding up one finger, two fingers, three to "number" the photos he was taking as he did similar studies, and then had to wait for film to come back.

Thank you!

RE: Camera play2: ISO

Umm_fish — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 09:56:38 GMT

Thanks, Anthony. As I said in the beginning, it's all pretty selfish. I'm doing this to try to make my photos better. But, I know that you are a huge advocate of people taking control of their cameras instead of letting the cameras make all of the decisions, so I thought that you might welcome the posts. I do hope that looking at the photos either helps someone else or encourages them to try taking a bunch of photos like these. I've learned an incredible amount just with the time taken to look at the settings of really only about 30 photos so far.

I think I need to do 1-2 more of these little series for myself when time allows. Would you mind if I documented those, too?

Thanks!

RE: Camera play2: ISO

Anthony Calfo — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 01:51:34 GMT

tremendous thanks for the time youve taken/shared in this illustrated perspective my friend!

Camera play2: ISO

Umm_fish — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 12:51:31 GMT

This is a follow-up to another camera exploration post:

http://forum.marinedepot.com/Topic75692-26-1.aspx

Now I know how to get reasonable depth-of-field in my photos by taking control of the F-stop. But, the cost really seemed to be fairly prohibitive shutter speeds. My new goal was to see what I could do to reduce the shutter speeds and still get acceptable results.

One of the benefits of doing this little exercise for me has been just typing in the numbers over and over again--reinforcement that I seem to need. One of the things that struck me yesterday was typing in ISO: 100 over and over.

Last night, as I was researching, I came across an article written by a guy taking incredible insect photos (http://www.vividlight.com/articles/2914.htm). He's using a fairly similar setup to mine (except for the lens) but he's doing all of his shots _handheld._ So, what the heck is he doing taking 5:1 macros shots without a tripod? Other than just possessing nerves of steel?

One of the things I noticed is that he is using a very different ISO setting than I am. Hmm. Time to read about ISO.

The ISO setting on a digital camera tells the camera what film speed you want to use? Okay, there's no film, but it's telling the camera's sensor to _act_ like different types of film.

When you open the shutter outside on a sunny day, you expect that a _lot_ of light is going to pour in. You need a film (or here, the sensor) that will respond slowly to light. This corresponds to the ISO 100 setting on the camera. This setting will give you pictures that are the most clear and with the most detail, but it'll also take the longest shutter speed to do it.

The higher you set the ISO setting, the more responsive to light the sensor will be and the faster the shutter speed. What's the trade-off? The higher the ISO, the grainier the image will be.

So, again, it's a matter of looking at trade-offs. Take a look at some photos (the photo details are below each photo):

IMG_8344.cr2
Shutter Speed: 5.0 sec
F-Stop: f/16.0
ISO: 100

IMG_8345.cr2
Shutter Speed: 2.0 sec
F-Stop: f/16.0
ISO: 200

IMG_8346.cr2
Shutter Speed: 1.0 sec
F-Stop: f/16.0
ISO: 400

IMG_8347.cr2
Shutter Speed: 0.5 sec
F-Stop: f/16.0
ISO: 800

IMG_8348.cr2
Shutter Speed: 1/4 sec
F-Stop: f/16.0
ISO: 1600

IMG_8349.cr2
Shutter Speed: 2.0 sec
F-Stop: f/11.0
ISO: 100

IMG_8350.cr2
Shutter Speed: 1.0 sec
F-Stop: f/11.0
ISO: 200

IMG_8351.cr2
Shutter Speed: 0.5
F-Stop: f/11.0
ISO: 400

IMG_8352.cr2
Shutter Speed: 1/4 sec
F-Stop: f/11.0
ISO: 800

IMG_8353.cr2
Shutter Speed: 1/8 sec
F-Stop: f/11.0
ISO: 1600