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Week 8 – Controlling The Image – ISO & Shutter Speed

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ISO

ISO orginated from film camera, the ISO number recorded how wuickly the cmera recorded image data on to a roll of film. ISO is now used to set the light sensitivity of your camera sensor.

ISO is a tool often used in low light, action photography, dark or fast conditions.

Higher ISO – Allows more light in the camera – brighter image but more noise (grainy appearance) – useful to balance restricted light levels.

You should normally have your ISO between 100 – 400

  • 100-200 sunny outdoor shooting
  • 400-800 indoors with good lighting or outdoors on a dull day
  • 800+ indoors with less light

Higher ISO may be used to intentionally bring in noise to the image to create an artistic effect.

For clean and clear images a lower ISO is prefereed

To set the ISO go to the manual mode on the camera, which is marked with an ‘M’. The ISO setting on your camera should have a ISO identifier by the side of it and can be modified.

Shutter Speed

Shutter speed also controls how much light gets into the sensor, – it controls how long the shutter is open for. For the best exposure, balance the shutter speed and the f-stop settings with the ISO. Full auto setting will do this for you but gives you less control over the specific look of your images. We use a fast shutter speed for fast action to keep details in sharp focus and for where we want to freeze frame the shot.

Shutter Speed can be changed with the mode TV or S. Shutter speed is expressed as a portion of a second so 1/125 mean 125th of a second long. Any shots slower than 1/125 such as 1/80 you will struggle with handheld and need a tripod.

Here we have effectsof differnt shutter speeds. For 1 second, theres more light because the shutter is open for longer but there is also more blur becuse the sugar is moving while shutter is open. The second shot captures some of the oment. The third shot 1000th of a second shows a very fast shutter speed and the movement is frozen in a split second.

Here is a diagram for ISO, shutter and aperture and their effect on the image. You can see a small aperture gets everything in focus but limits light, a large aperture gives selective focus and allows a lot of light in, a fast shutter captures the movement in focus but limits light, a slow shutter creates blur but allows more light, and a low ISO creates clear images but limits light while a high ISO creates grainy images but allows more light.

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