What ISO do you use the most (in given lighting situations)?

I'm wondering what other peoples opinions are on this. I recently took a lot of shots for a friend for her business and I tended towards using ISO100 for pretty much the whole lot (using flash bouncing for lighting as needed).

Of course, when I passed these pictures on to a friend to have a fiddle with (read as: edit into being a more interesting picture =P), he noticed immediately that I was shooting almost exclusively at 100. He pointed out that he shoots primarily at 400 (sometimes at 800 as circumstances dictate), and that it's better to shoot at higher ISO as the noise level is more manageable. I think he also mentioned something about contrast, but this is me trying to remember a conversation from a week ago.

So what do you all shoot in? What is your favourite ISO for noise (or lack of it)?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Mark Hamilton on November 15, 2009 at 12:18pm

Hi Marc
Generally you should use the lowest ISO you can which will give you the results you are after. I set the camera at 100 ISO when I can but many situations do require a faster setting. Concerts I use 1600 ISO on average but have changed to slower setting if there is tonnes of light. 400 ISO is a good alround setting and it will give you more options for when using flash - quicker recharge, smaller apeture or a greater camera to subject distance. If you are using long lenses without tripod you need to keep your shutter speed high to reduce/remove any camera shake. hope this helps. Mark

Permalink Reply by Glynn Jackson on November 19, 2009 at 3:58pm

Thanks Mark and Sue for your valuable replies to the question. I am new into phtography and trying to come to terms with f- stops, ISO and such like. Glynn

Permalink Reply by Marc Crowther on November 20, 2009 at 1:01pm

I'm still shooting mostly at ISO 100, but am experimenting with different ISO's this weekend to see how badly the noise affects the shots.

I recall now that he mentioned that there's little noise at 100, but noise increases as ISO levels increase. E.g. There is more noise generally in a photo taken at 800 than at 400. I think he also mentioned that with noise being IN the picture, it was something that could be accounted for, manipulated etc. I always thought that you should strive for little to no noise. Am I wrong?

Permalink Reply by Marc Crowther on November 20, 2009 at 1:45pm

Thanks for the feedback Sue. It's appreciated.

Eventually I'll get around to posting some of the shots I've done at different settings. I like seeing actual evidence of things so it'll be interesting to do the experimenting this weekend =)

Permalink Reply by John Bennett on November 20, 2009 at 7:02pm

I shoot mainly at 400 but occasionally I do use 800 especially with my 400mm lens as it is 600mm on the digital in lower light situations and late in the afternoon at rodeos to stop the action. I do a lot of wheelchair racing action and as my Pentax only goes down to 200 ISO I use an 8 neutral density filter So I can get blurred backgrounds when panning. John

Permalink Reply by Dylan Toh on November 27, 2009 at 8:38pm

Its funny I just wrote a reply on another forum about the same topic!
Much of it depends shutter speed and aperture that you require for a given scene.
- For landscape shots, even in poor light, I tend to shoot at iso100 with small aperture and long exposure so that there is minimal grain and the long exposures tend to give funky looking effects. If there is alot of wind around and foilage is moving , then I may bump up the iso and open the aperture just to make sure the image has as little motion blur as possible.
- For waterfall or flowing water, I even bring it down to iso 50 so I can get an even longer shutter speed
- For candids /sport, you really need a pretty good shutter speed and often you don't want to have a huge aperture like 2.8 or parts of a face may be out of focus - For instance, at weddings, I choose the lowest shutter speed I can safely get away with without blur (often 1/100) and choose the desired aperture (eg 1.8 for bokeh effect or 4.0 for group shots etc) and then select the best iso to allow correct exposure. You also need to know the effect of high iso specific for your camera - on the 5dmkII I could happily snap at 1600 with hardly any noticeable grain, but on the 40D - 1600 iso - ouch to post process!

hope that was helpful