ISO

ISO = Sensitivity to light

What does it do?

Everyone knows the situation, your trying to take a photo, probably inside or a night and you take your shot but when you look at it the photo is all blurry. This is because the shutter has stayed open too long and the camera has moved, therefore blurring the image.

With ISO setting, you can turn the number up, which makes the sensor more sensitive to light. so, from say, 400 to 1600. This means that the shutter doesn't need to stay open as long, so you can take a sharp image, with out blurriness.

Great? Well, sort of...

although the shutter is now able to open and shut faster, when you bump the ISO up, it causes the camera to create noise in the image. The higher the ISO goes the more noise that appears in the image. This is caused by something to do with more electricity/heat being sent to the sensor. (?)

So, during the day, or when you have a lot of light use a low ISO setting, around 100. But when shooting indoors or in lower light use a higher ISO, but with a little bit more noise.

Even with the great technology in cameras today, this noise is still a problem. There are noise reduction features, but are they actually effective? Sometimes they can cut down the noise but give this weird smooth effect to your image.

I dunno, let me know what you think!

Peace

Andy