# Should I keep ISO as low as possible?



## andytakeone (Oct 30, 2015)

I know ISO is a sort of artificial amplification of the sensor which adds more grain as it increases,
but does that mean the ISO should always be kept at 100 unless you absolutely have to increase it?

I was at a workshop the other week where we were using a flash lighting set up, with a couple soft boxes and a beauty dish and the instructor told us to set our settings to something like f/11, 1/25, ISO 200.

Why he insisted on the ISO being 200 instead of 100 is what confuses me. If we have a full flash lighting set up, shouldn't exposure not be a problem?


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## EIngerson (Oct 30, 2015)

You should keep it as low as you can while still allowing proper exposure. 

Did your instructor use a light meter?


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## andytakeone (Oct 30, 2015)

EIngerson said:


> You should keep it as low as you can while still allowing proper exposure.
> 
> Did your instructor use a light meter?



Yes, he did.
So should all studio set ups that have ample lighting be done in ISO 100 then?


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## EIngerson (Oct 30, 2015)

There is no rule. If he set to ISO 200 and used a light meter I'm assuming he just told you to use the settings he read. You'd be hard pressed to notice a difference between 100 or 200 in a studio setting.

It could also be that he was wanting to use F11 specifically and needed to get the shutter speed up. 1/25 is slow enough that you'll still rely on your lights to stop motion.


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## andytakeone (Oct 30, 2015)

EIngerson said:


> There is no rule. If he set to ISO 200 and used a light meter I'm assuming he just told you to use the settings he read. You'd be hard pressed to notice a difference between 100 or 200 in a studio setting.
> 
> It could also be that he was wanting to use F11 specifically and needed to get the shutter speed up. 1/25 is slow enough that you'll rely on your lights to stop motion.



I see. Thanks.
So you're saying whether he used ISO 200 or 100 didn't really matter, so he just chose 200 for no particular reason?
He did want to use f/11 specifically, but what do you mean when you say he needed to get the shutter speed up? He kept the shutter speed at 1/25 at all times, he never wanted anything faster.


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## sashbar (Oct 30, 2015)

It depends on your camera, with modern FF or APS-C cameras you can use higher ISO much more freely than 6 or 7 years ago. 
You may try for yourself, shoot the same scene with ISO 100, 200, 400, 800 etc and compare the IQ.  You will be able to decide for yourself how high you would want to allow it without IQ degradation.  
Keeping ISO to basic 100 is one of the most widespread beginners' mistakes these days.  You pay for it with slower shutter speed, and end up with blurry images that is much, much worse than hight ISO grain.
I am shooting with an APS-C FUJI camera and often do not mind shooting with ISO 3200 or even 6400.


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## andytakeone (Oct 30, 2015)

sashbar said:


> It depends on your camera, with modern FF or APS-C cameras you can use higher ISO much more freely than 6 or 7 years ago.
> You may try for yourself, shoot the same scene with ISO 100, 200, 400, 800 etc and compare the IQ.  You will be able to decide for yourself how high you would want to allow it without IQ degradation.
> Keeping ISO to basic 100 is one of the most widespread beginners' mistakes these days.  You pay for it with slower shutter speed, and end up with blurry images that is much, much worse than hight ISO grain.
> I am shooting with an APS-C FUJI camera and often do not mind shooting with ISO 3200 or even 6400.



I see, but given you don't have to make any concessions with shutter speed or f/stop, you want it as low as possible right?
Not necessarily at 100 per se, but at the lowest mark where you don't have to make shutter speed or f/stop concessions, whether that be at ISO 100 or ISO 3200.


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## jaomul (Oct 30, 2015)

If the lights are not very strong an increase in iso may be needed for proper exposure.


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## Dao (Oct 30, 2015)

There is a possibility that the instructor want to make sure everybody can use the same settings.  The base ISO value of some digital SLR cameras is 200 instead of 100 (without boost).  i.e.  Nikon D300

Or the instructor tried to lower the flash recycle time.


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## Scatterbrained (Oct 30, 2015)

andytakeone said:


> sashbar said:
> 
> 
> > It depends on your camera, with modern FF or APS-C cameras you can use higher ISO much more freely than 6 or 7 years ago.
> ...


Generally, the lower iso setting you use the more dynamic range your sensor will display and the less noise will be evident.   It's always a compromise, but in general you'll want to keep the iso as low as you can, without going overboard.  If you need f/8 and 1/125th then do it, even if that means shooting at iso 3200.   
    Shooting with strobes it's unlikely you'd need to shoot over 100-400, depending on the situation.   I wonder however why use 1/25th.  That doesn't make sense unless you're trying to pull in ambient, at which point it would make more sense to lower the lights output and open up the aperture a wee bit.


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## beagle100 (Oct 30, 2015)

sashbar said:


> It depends on your camera, with modern FF or APS-C cameras you can use higher ISO much more freely than 6 or 7 years ago.
> You may try for yourself, shoot the same scene with ISO 100, 200, 400, 800 etc and compare the IQ.  You will be able to decide for yourself how high you would want to allow it without IQ degradation.
> Keeping ISO to basic 100 is one of the most widespread beginners' mistakes these days.  You pay for it with slower shutter speed, and end up with blurry images that is much, much worse than hight ISO grain.
> I am shooting with an APS-C FUJI camera and often do not mind shooting with ISO 3200 or even 6400.



I agree, shooting at "basic ISO 100" is a mistake ---   don't worry about shooting ISO 3200 or ISO 6400 !


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## Dave442 (Oct 30, 2015)

Even with my older cameras it is hard to see a difference in the ISO 100 to 400 range. With flash I often go to ISO 160 or 200 just to start at. That also lets you drop the ISO back down if you want to. I find it often helps to not be at the limit of any of the settings so you have some room to move.


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## astroNikon (Oct 30, 2015)

My lightmeter only goes down to ISO 200 - Minolta IV
So when I do studio stuff my ISO is set at 200.

Nowadays one may not notice much noise at levels of ISO 6400
so ISO being at 100 is not so critical nowadays with modern digital cameras.  Now we're much more flexible and use it as appropriate for the exposure.


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## Ysarex (Oct 30, 2015)

There is no IQ advantage when ISO is raised. On a digital camera a higher ISO doesn't cause any kind of positive difference in the image but only has negative IQ effects. Those negative effects are very minor at first and not worth trading off against the negative effects of failing to get the shutter speed or aperture that will deliver the best photo.

NOTE: You mentioned that noise increases with ISO increase. Others here have also mentioned noise. Nearly every time you hear or read about the negative effects of raising ISO you hear noise and only noise. Go back and read what Scatterbrained said and please note it's the first thing he mentions. Raising ISO on a digital camera decreases dynamic range. In others words you record less data. Noise can be filtered. Data you don't record just isn't there.

Joe


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## dennybeall (Oct 30, 2015)

Consider that you set speed and f-stop for very specific reasons. ISO is usually set last or automatically to support that choice. You want to keep ISO as low as possible to keep noise down but with modern cameras, as has been stated, you can use an ISO much higher.
The instructor was setting up a specific shot so the ISO setting was just part of the exposure setting.
I often set ISO to 800 or 1200 to get the exposure I want with a f4.0 lens when movement calls for a faster shutter speed.


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## spiralout462 (Oct 30, 2015)

Portraits= low ISO.  

Birds, birds in flight= high ISO.

In general of course.


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## snowbear (Oct 30, 2015)

I bought all them ISOs and by-golly I'm gonna use them all!

Try a couple of test shots with low, medium and high ISO and see what you get.  Mix it up - dark & gloomy, bright and shiny, some in the middle.  Try to find out what your camera's limitations are.


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## runnah (Oct 30, 2015)

Best practice for extracting the most out of you sensor is to figure out what the native ISO is for your sensor. The native ISO is the one that your sensor will perform the best at. Often it's not the lowest setting.


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## EIngerson (Oct 30, 2015)

The take away answer is yes, you want to use as low of an ISO that your exposure allows. There's a ton of great information in the responses. Good luck and have fun. Post photos often.


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## andytakeone (Oct 31, 2015)

Thanks for the replies everyone, I think I've pieced it together now.
This really helped.


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## Bebulamar (Oct 31, 2015)

Assuming you can have as much or as little light as you want so that you can expose your shot at the aperture and shutter speed you want at any ISO then the best ISO is the native ISO of the sensor. No manufacturer stated this in the spec but all sensor has a base ISO rating. Using ISO below base ISO reduces quality.


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## Braineack (Oct 31, 2015)

andytakeone said:


> I was at a workshop the other week where we were using a flash lighting set up, with a couple soft boxes and a beauty dish and the instructor told us to set our settings to something like f/11, 1/25, ISO 200.



judging by the settings im assuming the flashes were incredibly weak, or he also wanted ambient light in the shot.


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## Bebulamar (Oct 31, 2015)

andytakeone said:


> I know ISO is a sort of artificial amplification of the sensor which adds more grain as it increases,
> but does that mean the ISO should always be kept at 100 unless you absolutely have to increase it?
> 
> I was at a workshop the other week where we were using a flash lighting set up, with a couple soft boxes and a beauty dish and the instructor told us to set our settings to something like f/11, 1/25, ISO 200.
> ...



What if the flash putting out just that much light and the ambient light level is just that much and also I don't know if what you were to photograph has any motion.

Do you think if you use ISO100 and f/8 it would be better? 
If the flash can be brighter then you will have to slower the shutter speed to 1/12 in order to have the same exposure for ambient light. But is there any motion related problem? He specified 1/25 shutter speed I think there is ambient light involved otherwise he would choose higher shutter speed.


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## Braineack (Oct 31, 2015)

im wondering if someone simply misheard 1/25 for 1/125sec.


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## Dao (Oct 31, 2015)

OP, can you describe how the environment looks like in terms of brightness?  f/11 ISO200 with 1/25 should result a quite dark scene with regular home lights.   I just did a quick test with a small bedroom which has two 800 lumens bulbs, the result is kind of dark on the while wall, not black.


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## vintagesnaps (Oct 31, 2015)

I was wondering the same thing, if it was supposed to be 1/125.

I think Dao might be right (several posts back) that the instructor picked an ISO setting for the class that would work with everyone's cameras. That might just be intended as a starting point or what should be used for this assignment/lesson.

You might want to ask the instructor why that setting is being used. I'd suggest too that you may want to ask about ISO in general; your description seems like you don't have a good understanding of it yet (ask what ISO stands for, what it is, how it's used in photography, etc.). It would probably help you learn how to adjust it if you develop a better understanding of it.


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## Braineack (Oct 31, 2015)

I often use ISO 200 in the studio because my 150watt/sec lights arent the brightest.

doubles the output...


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## Derrel (Oct 31, 2015)

Braineack said:
			
		

> I often use ISO 200 in the studio because my 150watt/sec lights arent the brightest.
> 
> doubles the output...



I have powerful studio flash units, but I often will move to ISO 160 or ISO 200 with them because it allows me to use  less flash power, so my subjects do not have to be exposed to more Pop! from the strobes than necessary, and the higher ISO level also cuts flash recycling time significantly. That is what I like the most--faster flash recycle times.

When shooting bounce flash stuff with a single speedlight, I usually recommend moving upward, away from the lowest ISO settings, and beginning at ISO 320,400, or 500. SHooting a flash say six feet to a ceiling and then 12 feet to a subject is more than just being at 18 feet....the flash is coming from 18 feet, but it is also diluted/dispersed quite a bit, so using ISO 100 often ends up being a full discharge of the capacitor, which means that there is literally NO possibility to dial in Plus exposure compensation, since the flash is discharging all available energy due to the need for a lot of light at ISO 100. Moving the ISO level upward of 100 when shooting bounce flash also reduces battery drain and also speeds up flash recycle times, and gives some margin for flash exposure adjustments on shots made at 15 feet and a ways beyond that.

15 years ago, the Base ISO level was really where the real image quality was in digital capture, am dISO levels of 400 were only marginally acceptable. It is not that same era now.


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## SCraig (Oct 31, 2015)

You should use ISO just as you would any other setting.  Adjust them as necessary to get the shot you want based on the conditions while knowing that there are pros and cons to each one of them.  ISO is no more nor no less important than shutter speed and aperture, it's one of the three legs of the so-called "Exposure Triangle" and should be treated as such.


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## Bebulamar (Oct 31, 2015)

Besides my camera (a Nikon Df) I don't think ISO 100 would give better result than ISO 200.


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## Dao (Oct 31, 2015)

In some camera such as the D300, D700, D3 or D3s,  photos taken with iso100 may look worst than iso200 since the base iso of those cameras are iso200.  Based on what I read in the past, the differences may not be too big, but it is there.


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## The_Traveler (Oct 31, 2015)

Most of the prior responses were assuming you are heading for maximum image quality and have some lattitude about shutter speed and aperture.
If you are not shooting with auxiliary sources of light and the situation means that you want/need a spoecific aperture and want/need a certain shutter speed, then you boost the iso as much as possible.  
It is better to get some noise and the image you want then to get a bad image. 
I've shot in the NYC subways at f2 and 1/40 and iso 3200 or 6400 so that I can get the image I want.
If the image is good enough technical shortcomings don't mean anything.


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## Braineack (Nov 1, 2015)

Bebulamar said:


> Besides my camera (a Nikon Df) I don't think ISO 100 would give better result than ISO 200.



better result in terms of what?

ISO 100 is the base ISO for that camera.

Technically 100 iso would be the best iso for IQ on your camera.  BUT you'll be hard-pressed to see the difference between 100 and 200.


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## sashbar (Nov 1, 2015)

andytakeone said:


> sashbar said:
> 
> 
> > It depends on your camera, with modern FF or APS-C cameras you can use higher ISO much more freely than 6 or 7 years ago.
> ...



That's correct, if we talk about lowest *native* ISO. 

What I was trying to say is that many beginners (incl. myself some yars ago) underestimate the need for higher shutter speed and get more concerned about the ISO,trying to keep it at about 100.  Then they wonder why their images are "not sharp enough". A lot of them are shooting people/kids/moving objects at something like 1/125 sec and think they make no shutter speed consessions. Whereas a more experienced photographer will often crank up the ISO to shoot at 1/250 or 1/400.


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## Braineack (Nov 1, 2015)

the term native is confusing anymore.  native should mean all iso's that aren't extended.

base means what native used to.


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## yaopey (Nov 1, 2015)

I'm not sure why your instructor choose ISO 200 and the given aperture. But I would thought he wanted to keep shutter speed at 1/200 or below to avoid the shutter curtain from blocking the light.


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## gsgary (Nov 1, 2015)

Was he shooting with a Nikon ?


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## Derrel (Nov 1, 2015)

yaopey said:
			
		

> I'm not sure why your instructor choose ISO 200 and the given aperture. But I would thought he wanted to keep shutter speed at 1/200 or below to avoid the shutter curtain from blocking the light.



If he was using an older Nikon d-slr like, the base ISO would be 200, and that would work well for basically almost ANY digital camera that any of the members of the class might happen to have. The suggested shutter sped of 1/25 seems a bit odd though...it's a very slow speed, and it does not offer much benefit, especially when paired with an aperture of f/11. I keep wondering if the instructor really specified one one-hundred and twenty-fifth of a second [ 1/125  ] instead of one twenty-fifth of a second...

One of the best answers is just a few posts back...many beginning shooters become fixated on keeping ISO as low as is humanly possible, constantly shooting all sorts of things at the absolute lowest ISO setting their camera allows, and they often end up with substandard photos because they refused to elevate the ISO in order to gain a more-favorable exposure for conditions.


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## Braineack (Nov 1, 2015)

Here's an image I JUST took at ISO 200 and f/11:




Jean Jacket Selfie by The Braineack, on Flickr


I shot it at 1/125sec.  My lights were turned up pretty high--almost full power.  At ISO 100, it would have been underexposed and I'm not sure my lights could of outputted enough.

had I shot it at 1/25, the image would look identical, I was using (1) 65watt light to light my studio space.  I forgot to actually take that image to show the non-difference.


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## unpopular (Nov 1, 2015)

There is no advantage to shooting at an ISO higher than needed and plenty of disadvantages. While it is true that todays digital cameras perform very well at higher ISO, they will perform better at lower ISO (going down to the sensors base ISO, as mentioned) in terms of dynamic range, and, yes, noise. The issue may not be apparent until the image is edited, but lower ISO will, and always will, hold better SNR, especially in the shadows.

Always shoot at as low an ISO as practical. There is NO reason, none at all, to shoot at ISO 6400 just because todays digital cameras are better at ISO 6400 than they used to be. There is zero technical advantage aside from getting away with being sloppy. That said, some subjects will demand a level of sloppiness to best obtain the decisive moment. Wildlife photography in changing lighting conditions, for example, is one place where you might not want to be fiddling with minimum ISO. In such a case, "minimum ISO" might be defined as as the proper exposure at minimum functional aperture at whatever maximum time to best provides a sharp image. This would give you the widest range of options. Like everything, what "minimum ISO" means depends on what you're doing. But the attitude shouldn't be "I'll shoot at ISO 6400 because I'm too lazy to think about exposure".

---

On a side note, increasing sensitivity is not "artificial" amplification until you get into the so-called "boost" range. ISO is literally adjusting the analogue gain prior to digitization; the sensor literally has amplifier circuitry built into itself to increase the signal level, not dissimilar to increasing the volume on your stereo.


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## Averil_white (Nov 9, 2015)

I try to fit my ISO to the situation - I tend to shoot in Aperture mode most of the time, so it's a bit easier, I just need to think about whether I'm shooting handheld or tripod, what it is I'm shooting, what aperture I want, and adjust to bring my shutter speed to the right level.


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## andytakeone (Nov 17, 2015)

Derrel said:


> yaopey said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I asked him if he meant 1/125, he said no 1/25.

After asking why, he said that the picture will be froze and exposed with the speed of the flash rather than the shutter speed so he wanted to keep the shutter wide open and slow.


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## Braineack (Nov 18, 2015)

andytakeone said:


> I asked him if he meant 1/125, he said no 1/25.
> 
> After asking why, he said that the picture will be froze and exposed with the speed of the flash rather than the shutter speed so he wanted to keep the shutter wide open and slow.



Was the point of the excerise to stop motion?  There's a little validity here, but I have doubts.


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## Dao (Nov 18, 2015)

So the camera settings are for the flash and the ambient.


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## Village Idiot (Nov 18, 2015)

Braineack said:


> Here's an image I JUST took at ISO 200 and f/11:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Snazzy Canadian Tuxedo you have there!


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## Braineack (Nov 19, 2015)

Braineack said:


> Was the point of the excerise to stop motion?




bueller?


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