Photography can be viewed both as a simple subject and a confusing subject, but it all depends on how much you are willing to learn and how far you want to push your skills.? Mastering digital photography doesn't have to be tough, but it does take a little persistence and it will pay off big time with the results you can get.
When shooting various types of photography, particularly digital sports photography, you should make use of functions such as film speed / sensor sensitivity, commonly known as ISO (or ASA for film).? Most digital cameras have the ability to change the sensitivity and it can come by various different ways, whether you have a ISO button on your camera or have to use the menu to locate the settings (consult your camera user manual).? Many automatic settings make use of the ISO but you do not realise it is happening, so by taking manual control you can get the camera to help you achieve the results you want.
To freeze the action with digital sports photography, shooting with a high ISO is often essential, particularly in low light or if shooting with a long telephoto lense.
Newer digital SLR cameras now have extremely advanced processing capabilities and if you shoot at a very high ISO you can often see grain on the photo (much like a poor quality analogue TV signal).? Where as with the high quality camera processing of today, this is not noticable in most instances.
This offers great benefit to not just digital sports photography, where grain can be forgiven as it is far preferable to blur!? Say for example you are taking photos at a wedding, birthday or other event in the evening or indoors, you can take fantastically natural and high quality photos without the need for a flash, which can often give a un-natural look to your photos.
If you have a church near you, go and take some photos inside and you will be surprised at often how little light there is!? With a high ISO you get more natural skin tones, and very atmospheric photos where as you can lose a lot of that with a flash.
To change your ISO settings, you will need to use your menu / ISO button to navigate to the settings and you can change this from normally 100 or 200 to 1,000 upwards (sometimes even 3,200!).? The higher the number, the more grain but faster shutter speed you will get.? Don't just use extreme ends of the scale though, because you will get better results by learning what is effective and when for example if it is overcast consider shooting ISO 400 to ISO 800, or if shooting indoor hand held photos consider using ISO 1,200.
Now, you have heard the benefits of shooting with a high ISO but what about the other end of the scale?? Shooting with a low ISO...? Well, firstly with a low ISO it has the opposite effect which is a slower shutter speed.? With a low ISO (fine grain / low sensitivity) also comes very fine detail and the least amount of grain on the photo - perfect if you are shooting still life and want the best details, or need a longer shutter speed if you are using a tripod and want to blur out the running water flowing over a waterfall.
Mastering digital photography does involve a lot of experimentation however, so ensure you practice and don't expect great results the first time round.? There are hundreds of opportunities around you that you can make use of every day to improve your photography!
Here are just a few:
- Nearby river / stream
- Church or old buildings
- School sports day
- Local swimming pool / gym
- Flowers and insects in your garden
By playing around with the ISO settings you will get a natural feel and knack of what ISO you should shoot so when time is previous, you wont be wasting time by testing different settings.
I hope you make use of the under rated ISO settings and take some wonderful photos as a result of reading this article!
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