Pro's Know this about ISO & Beginners Avoid It! (at least i did)

many thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this week's video one of the very first things many new photographers are told especially those aspiring landscape photographers is that in order to create the I guess the the cleanest and highest quality images is possible you must always use ISO 100 and only deviate from this value in emergency situations when there is absolutely no other choice and the reason I know this is because I was one of those beginner photographers that was locked at ISO 100 for years and would literally have a a full-on panic attack at the sheer thought of steering away from this tried and true methodology of selecting proper camera settings but one thing that gets completely lost most of the time during this this ISO discussion has to do with the other problems that can be solved by simply increasing your ISO seems that most of the time this discussion is predicated on obtaining clean and Noise free photographs which instills fear in the minds of many when it comes to increasing this value but there's a lot more to it than that and in this video I want to share with you my take on this topic and why I often shoot with higher isos but I do have a very quick question for you do you say ISO or do you say ISO leave me a comment below and let me know which Camp you're in is it seems that there are two types of folks in this world those that say ISO and those that say ISO so to jump right into it most of the time well whenever I'm making videos a lot of times when they're on location videos and someone happens to see the back of my camera and it'll say ISO 640 or ISO 1600 sometimes ISO 3200 and I get comments pretty frequently with people asking now Mark why are you shooting with such a high ISO level you're you're shooting in the broad daylight you're not shooting astrophotography or the Milky Way or anything like that what's with the high ISO and and the short answer is most of the time it has to do with obtaining a very specific shutter speed for a certain situation and and that's what I'm going to cover in this video is the three scenarios where I'm really looking for a very specific type of camera camera setting I guess triage or pyramid if you will and I need to bump up that ISO to create that so the very first scenario has to do with photographing trees I live very close to the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina and I love photographing trees and trees have branches and these branches most of the time have leaves and unless it's completely still outside which it random or a very seldom is those leaves are going to be blowing around a little bit and here's a good example of this scenario right here this is an image from a from Zion National Park a couple years ago actually I'm sorry this is last year and if you zoom all the way in you can see that all of these leaves are absolutely tack sharp and in order for me to obtain a shutter speed fast enough to get these leaves this fat or to get these leaves this sharp I had to use ISO 640 because it was just a little bit of wind it wasn't like a hurricane or gale force wind or anything like that it was just enough Breeze and oftentimes I'm shooting in the golden arrows in the early morning light or on the the late evening light where there's not a ton of sunlight out there it's not like you're shooting at High Noon so in order to get a fast enough shutter speed and a reasonably exposed photograph I have to bump up that ISO level so just a real quick clarifying Point here the reason I like to lean on ISO as opposed to aperture in this scenario is that aperture has a more I guess meaningful and could have a very significant change to your overall photograph where ISO is kind of lower impact so if you go from say F 16 to f8 really opening up your aperture yeah you're allowing more light into your camera but you're also completely altering the overall depth of field of your photograph which is going to completely change the look of it as opposed to going from ISO 100 to ISO 640 or maybe 800 or maybe 1600 that's going to have a very very low impact to your overall photograph you might have a little bit of additional noise if you really really pixel Peep and and ISO values well above 1600 but for the most part it's going to have very very little impact negative impact to your to your overall photograph so that is why I lean on ISO as opposed to just opening up your aperture as wide as it can go in some scenarios here is another example here this from my recent trip to Colorado just a couple months ago once again if you zoom all the way in here you will notice that these leaves are absolutely tack sharp and if you watch that on location video where this image was captured you'll know that there was a little bit of wind blowing in and out this was shot as you can tell the sun was Rising right through here this is maybe a 30 or 40 minutes after the sun rose so there wasn't a ton of ambient light so in order to get that fast enough shutter speed I had to bump up that ISO level so that seems to be a scenario that I encounter all the time and what when it's really really important is when you have vegetation or leaves extremely close to your camera like right through here if these were all blurry and all blown around and everything it would look one like mush and two it would really serve as a distraction but to have a fast enough shutter speed to capture everything in this scene perfectly perfectly crisp is very very important so that is probably one of the the number one scenarios where I bump up my ISO level from that 100 and like I mentioned before when I was a beginner I heard so much talk about ISO 100 ISO 100 it's always got to be 100 if you go to 200 if you double that your image is going to completely fall apart it's going to be completely noisy and it's just going to be a complete mess and I remember really contemplating like oh my gosh should I I need more light you know to get the specific shutter speed should I go from 100 to 200 I remember thinking about it is it even worth doing that should I just fix it in post but in reality cameras today are so good you can easily shoot at ISO 100 200 400 640 1600 it doesn't matter they're going to come you're going to be able to come away with an extremely clean looking photograph and if you don't believe me I would highly encourage you to just run a test in your backyard you know just create find some inanimate object a tree or put something on a fence post and take a couple images you know put your camera on a tripod and take a couple variations take an image at 400 take an image at ISO 640 1600 3200 and all the way up and in review those photographs just to see where your threshold is from what you deem a reasonably clean photograph with the camera that you're using and if you know that the camera that you're using looks perfect at ISO 3200 now you know how high you can go and feel comfortable doing that so that's a very good exercise to go through I do it with uh just about all of my cameras just to see how well it handles uh noise and grain created by bumping up that ISO now here's an example here where it's not super super important you know once again this is uh you know obviously there's a ton of trees in this Photograph but the trees are far enough away to where it doesn't it's not super critical if they if the leaves are flowing around at all and as you can tell here they're probably these leaves probably are blowing around this is a little bit of a longer exposure and there was a slight breeze that day so I'm pretty certain that all of these leaves through here are not tack sharp but since these trees are so far away from the camera you really can't tell the difference so that scenario it's not super super critical so understanding how close trees or how close anything that's moving in your scene is from your camera is wildly wildly important now here is another example right here where these leaves are far enough away and once again this is a longer exposure you can tell that it was very kind of you know ominous stormy skies right through here so there was a the amount of ambient light was definitely on the lower side so I had to drag out that shutter speed to create that you know well exposed photograph but these trees are far enough away from my camera to where you really wouldn't be able to tell if these leaves are blowing around it or not and I can assure you you def they definitely were because there was a storm coming in and there was plenty of wind blowing around these leaves so understanding exactly where the leaves are in your scene and maybe there isn't any leaves like in this scene right here definitely a woodland scene but this tree has no leaves on it and I mean I guess there's some branches right there but that is not enough to where you could uh I should say that area but in the background is slightly out of focus so you really wouldn't even be able to tell if those leaves are blowing around or not so it's really not that big of a deal so whenever you're photographing Woodland area or trees or anything like that that is probably one of the number one scenarios where I will bump up that ISO level because I'm trying to get a fast enough shutter speed in order to create those perfectly sharp leaves in the image but if the leaves aren't close enough to your camera to where you could really even tell the difference it is not quite as critical now one of the other main reasons is one of our arm photographing moving water which I absolutely love to do here's a great example of this from bass Harbor Lighthouse this is a during high tide lots of incredible wave action here crashing waves when whenever I see big waves Dynamic motion I always think of a faster shutter speed because I want to show that power I want to show that ferocity of the water and what better way to do that than with a faster shutter speed but as you can tell this is just a few moments before the sun set there obviously is not going to be a ton of light in order for me to get a fast enough shutter speed and if I had my ISO at 100 you can imagine how dark this exposure would have been but in order to get a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the action in this water I had to bump the iso level up to I believe 1600 with this particular image which was perfectly fine because that you know at ISO 1600 this is with the uh the Fuji actually this camera right here the xt4 there was absolutely no grain no noise nothing even even if you zoom into insane pixel peeping levels you are probably still not going to be able to see any noise but that is a very common scenario when I have to bump up my ISO is because I'm trying to get a fast enough shutter speed here's another good example here where this is a in a kind of a valley or a canyon if you will there's very very little light that gets in here especially in the early morning hours so in order to properly expose this Photograph and not have to do a you know a one minute long exposure because all of this water would have looked like complete mush it would have lost all that detail I wanted to speed up that shutter speed to around I think 1 25th of a second and bump up that ISO level to create that reasonably exposed photograph and I was still able to get all these nice striations in the water up through here which I absolutely love when I'm photographing waterfalls I love all of these little detail here but the only way to get that is to use not a super long shutter speed not a super fast shutter speed you got to get something kind of in the middle there but when there's not a lot of ambient light you'll probably have to bump up that ISO level to create that more balanced exposure and here's another great example of this from West Virginia once again there's just not a lot of light that gets down in here into this little Valley this is photographed in the morning and in order to get this shutter speed that I wanted as you can detail this is not a you know a a one thousandth of a second shutter speed there's definitely Motion in this water here but you can also tell that it's not a a two second shutter speed as well because there's still a ton of detail in this water which I absolutely love so in order to do that to get that shutter speed that I wanted and create that balanced exposure I had to bump up that ISO level in order to do that and this is one of my favorite fall images I've ever captured from from quite a few years ago but a lot of the times that is what I'm trying to do when I'm bumping up my my ISO to those higher levels and when I say higher levels it usually is somewhere between 640 and 1600 and it's usually just to get a desired shutter speed to photograph you know to to freeze the action and blowing leaves or to get a very specific shutter speed to show detail in water and not create you know detailed less water and not to freeze the action in the water so in summary those two instances it's always to obtain a very specific shutter speed and create that balanced exposure now the other reason is whenever I am handhelding hand holding an image now image Ibis in body image stabilization uh Optical image stabilization in lenses today is absolutely fantastic and you can really get away with hand holding slower shutter speeds more now than possibly ever but there is still scenarios where especially if you're photographing in dimmer light golden hour and you know the early morning hours later evening hours when you're gonna have to bump up that ISO level again this is an image from uh from last week's video and I mentioned in the video that this was a handheld shot I was only able to capture two of these of this Photograph the very first one was completely it wasn't completely out of focus but it definitely was not in focus and you could tell that it was camera shaped because I was at ISO 100 I bumped that up to ISO 1600 and was able to greatly increase my shutter speed and that in combination with the in-body image stabilization should have my gfx100s gave me the ability to create that tax sharp photograph and this is that version right here so photographing handheld is a very very common scenario where you'll probably have to bump up your ISO unless you're photographing you know at High Noon on a cloudless day and there's just an insane amount of light available for you to work with here's another quick image that I should say a quick grab only captured one version of this the light was just hitting these uh these what are these Pinnacles these Rock structures in uh in Utah it only lasted a couple of moments but I wanted to to grab it I didn't have time to set up my tripod and get my ball head and everything perfectly aligned so I just did a very quick handheld shot but I bumped up that ISO level to 1600 and was able to capture this and when we zoom into it you can tell that it is actually I don't know it's it's pretty sharp you know if you zoom out you definitely can't tell that uh it's a soft at all it might look a little bit soft but if I were to try and capture that at ISO 100 with a much longer shutter speed that this image would definitely have never come out and then one more image from my trip to Iceland last year uh the the famous church and this was just a very quick grab you know but once again not a ton of light storms rolling in had to bump up that ice so just a little bit I think the 640 in order to capture this Photograph but this right here is absolutely tack sharp and that is only because I was able to speed up that shutter speed by increasing that ISO and still being able to come away with a reasonably well exposed photograph so those are the three reasons why I often shoot with a higher ISO one in order to create a fast enough shutter speed for uh to freeze any type of blowing leaves or blowing branches in trees the other is to to obtain a specific shutter speed for moving water and a lot of times that moving water or waterfall is surrounded by blowing leaves and trees which is a very common scenario in my home state in North Carolina a lot of the the waterfalls here are always in valleys and it's surrounded by Woodland area so that's a pretty common scenario as well and then the third reason is whenever I'm hand holding a shot being able to to capture or being able to speed up that shutter speed enough to alleviate any type of camera movement so those are the three reasons why I I you might see me often shooting at ISO 640 or 1600 in videos and from my experience I'd never have any noise in any of these photographs every once in a while if I have to go up to ISO 3200 or maybe ISO 6400 and you really really zoom into the Deep Shadows of a photograph you can start to pick out some noise but normal people non-photographers They don't look at photographs that no one's going to zoom into the shadows of your image and be like I see a little bit of noise in here two thumbs down for that photograph nobody really cares and cameras today handle ISO and Noise absolutely incredible so I would not hesitate at all to bump up your ISO level in order to get a desired shutter speed to help with with whatever scenario you might have or might be encountering um I hope you I hope that information was helpful before I do wrap up this week's video though I just want to say a huge thanks to the long time sponsor of the channel which is Squarespace who I use for all of my website and e-commerce needs Squarespace provides a dynamic and attractive online platform to create your website you can display your photography using squarespace's professional portfolio designs and customize the layout and look and feel of your gallery just so you can make it your own with squarespace's traffic overview feature you can track Trends in page visits and Views to better optimize your content and you can even grow and engage with your customers with squarespace's email campaign tools which will enable you to create engaging emails that match your website with your products or blog posts and Logo just so your messaging remains consistent so if you're looking to start a new website or possibly upgrade your current website check out squarespace.com forward slash marked anything for a free trial and 10 percent off your first purchase so I do hope you enjoyed this week's video if you have any questions about any of this please leave those in the comments section below and and please leave me a comment also as to whether or not you fall in the camp of iso or ISO it's a very contentious debate I sometimes flip it around in videos and uh the uh the the backlash or the comments or the critiques I get is just off the charts so people are pretty passionate about whether you say ISO or ISO so let me know what camp you're in regarding that and if you did enjoy this week's video if you could give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel if you're not subscribed already share the video with your friends or your family or your local photo Club if you enjoyed it that much I really would appreciate it and as always thank you so much for carving out a little bit of time and spending it with me here today and I will see you all next Wednesday bye

Channel: Mark Denney

Views: 383,240

Keywords: landscape photography, landscape, photography, mark denney, landscape photography tips, landscape photography tutorial, landscape photography for beginners, iso, how to use iso, what is iso in photography, iso photography, how does iso affect a photo, how does iso affect shutter speed, iso landscape photography, iso explained, iso for beginners, what is iso, best camera settings, camera settings, camera, settings, how to pick the best camera settings, high iso photography, ISO, tips

Id: hFgE0AXYSqY

Length: 17min 56sec (1076 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 11 2023