A friend was just telling me how he looks forward to getting Auto-ISO in his next camera. I really grabbed him and shook him (despite this conversation happening across continents, over MSN Instant Messenger, heh). He suggested
“Hypocrite! you are going bonkers, it is only because you have gotten addicted to using your camera on manual. Control freakery, that’s all it is.” (etc).
Yes I am being hypocritical and no I do not really have a problem with people using Auto modes, if it helps more people get into photography then great. But ISO? Really? Out of all the functions of the camera surely this is the least of anyone’s worries. I mean, if you are worried about setting the correct ISO shouldn’t you be using one of the Auto-everything modes like full-auto, landscape or portrait?
I used those modes on my film SLR and I actually advise people to use them with their DSLRs for a while until they have mastered composition and other technicalities sufficiently that they are comfortable moving up to the next stage. ISO really has never been an issue.
If you find ISO tricky then just remember that low ISO numbers are less “grainy” but require more light, higher numbers give you less clean results but require less light. You can use higher shutter speeds at ISO 400 than ISO 100 for any given scene. This is purely a digital thing though, the people I know who still use film tend to stick to the same ISO regardless, indoor or out, cloudy or not (because they don’t like the wasted cost of changing a roll half way through I suspect). One guy will only use ISO 400 at all. You could happily do the same with your DSLR and stick to one ISO if you so wished.
Is it just me that doubts the utility of auto-ISO? Am I mad? or just a control freak …?
Technorati Tags: dslr, camera, auto, iso, tips, photography
4 Comments
Auto-ISO is the feature I miss most having moved from Nikon to Canon. It allows you to set the camera to manual, pick your shutter speed and F-stop, and then shoot away. It’s the best way to control DOF and motion blur — and then take care of possible noise later on in your workflow.
As Luminous Landscape argues, ISO should be promoted to a 1st-class setting, just like F-stop and shutter speed. Auto-ISO is the realization of this desire: it joins aperature and exposure priority as the third (hold two parameters constant, let the camera pick the third) auto mode.
I’ve used auto ISO for low-light sporting events, where I couldn’t strobe the facility. Aperture set on say f/2, shutter speed at 1/320, and auto-ISO to maintain appropriate exposure within those constraints.
My thoughts have already been sumarized by previous comments, the THREE exposure controlls are of equal importance. Why, with digital, we could simply fix the shutter speed to 1/125 and only adjust iso and aperture…. right?
I’m still waiting for the third control wheel. I like holding the AEL button and shifting my settings in manual mode without changing the EV. I would like to be able to do that with iso as well.
As well as old-school shutter priority and aperture priority, we really can automate any of the three settings in any combination. Auto shutter and iso, pick aperture. Auto aperture and shutter, pick iso. Full auto. Full manual. Having started with digital, I dont have any bad habbits or thought patterns from the days of film or mechanical cameras.
I think that is a good point, a lot of my thinking is from film even though I never progressed very far with it in comparison to my time investment with digital.