This is a continuation from the last Q&A post on aperture.
Once we set our aperture, the next thing we do is set our ISO. In addition to aperture, ISO is the other important element on how to get that great image out of your camera. We’ll talk about the last element, shutter speed, in the next blog post.
Important Info #1: The higher the ISO, the brighter your image will be.
Important Info #2: The higher the ISO, the more grainy it will be. Know your camera, and know how far up you can go on your ISO before you start noticing your images to be grainy (aka ‘noise’). 6400 is a pretty high ISO, and we would never go that high but we wanted to show you how grainy your images will look like if your ISO is too high. We have the 5D Mark iii where we can go as high as 2000 or 3200 for the ISO, and we would still be okay with our images. There’s some people who prefer grain in their images and there’s some that don’t. We personally prefer not to have a lot of grain in our images.
When we’re outside taking pictures, we would start with an ISO of 100 and then adjust as necessary. There’s usually enough light outside especially when it’s sunny, so we start off with the lowest ISO. When we’re inside taking pictures, we would start off with an ISO of 800 and then adjust as necessary.