What Is ISO? Complete Tutorial On ISO

Hello friends, today I have brought a new topic which will be the next topic in the series called “learn Basic Photography“. In this series we have covered 3 topics which are “What is Photography? and its types“, “What Is Shutter Speed in Photography“, “What Is Aperture & its role in Photography“. And today we are going to read “What Is ISO? Complete Tutorial On ISO”. Hope you enjoy today’s tutorial.

Through this topic, we have tried our best that you can get complete information about “ISO”, but still if you find any kind of deficiency or mistake, then you can reach us through the comment section below.

And if you get to learn anything from the article, then share this article with your friends as well.

What Is ISO? Complete Tutorial On ISO

The third photography pillar is ISO and the first two are aperture and shutter speed. If you want to learn the basics of ISO or photography, then you should read these two first. ISO makes a significant impact on your images. How ISO affects our photographs? What is ISO? What are the correct and commonly used values of ISO? What is Base ISO? How to do ISO settings? What are LOW and HIGH ISO and when should we use which one? This article will help you completely to know the answers to all these types of questions.

What Is ISO?

ISO controls the amount of light that comes through the camera and this affects the Darkness and Brightness of our image. Which you can easily adjust.

If you know in common language, ISO is a camera setting, which makes our photo brighter and darker. As you increase the ISO value, as a result, you will see more brightness in the photo. And on the other hand, as you keep reducing the ISO value, you will get to see blackness in your photo.

And because of this, ISO can help you a lot in giving you the same beautiful photos in low light and high light shoots.

When you click on an image at higher ISO, you can see a lot of GRAIN A digital noise in it, which becomes a very complicated task to fix technically. Or we can say that the photo is of no use to us. So our recommendation is that you should avoid increasing the brightness of the photo with ISO as much as possible, if you want to shoot in a dark environment, then you should use only aperture and shutter speed for brightness.

What Dose Mean By ISO?

The full name of ISO is “International Organization for Standardization”. ISO refers to the sensitivity of the film in a camera to light. Initially ISO only defined film sensitivity, but soon after making digital cameras, hair adopted this technique, to maintain similar brightness levels as film.

How To Select Right ISO?

Now we have understood what is ISO. Now that we know, what are the rules that help us choose the right ISO value?

Here below you will find some general rules For Finding the right sensitivity level for your DSLR or mirrorless camera’s digital sensor.

When and why to use ISO 100?

We first learned in this article that ISO leaves its effect on the light and darkness of our image.
When we are shooting in a sunny day, then we need less light so that our photo does not come overexposed. That’s why we should always use ISO 100 in such shoots where there is a lot of light.

When and why to use ISO 400?

We know that as we increase the ISO, the effect of light on our photo keeps on increasing. So in ISO 400 our photo will turn out brighter than ISO100.

We have to use ISO 400 in such a time, where the light is decent, but less intense, such as cloudy days.

When and why to use ISO 800?

As we go up the ISO will be higher which means the brightness in our photo will increase.
We have to use ISO 800 when we are shooting indoor, in which no external lighting is being used.

When and why to use ISO 1600 or more?

ISO 1600 means brighter photo than ISO 800.

We can use it at night or indoor in which the light is dim. In such a time, you will need high ISO to balance the brightness of the photo.
And if there is motion in your shoot, then you have to set the shutter speed fast with high ISO.

A pro tip is for you, try to always click photos on ISO 100 so that your photos come out sharp. But when you shoot in night or dark or dim light then you have to set accordingly.

What Is Base ISO?

The lowest ISO value of your camera is called Base ISO. This is a very important photography setting which ensures that the quality of your photos remains high. But as soon as you click the photo by increasing the ISO value, the quality of your image will decrease as compared to the base ISO. So if you can, try to always shoot at ISO100, but it may not always be possible because if we shoot in the dark with low ISO, our photos will come out completely dark. So in this case you have to set the ISO according to the environment of your shoot.

In some old DSLRs you will get to see Base ISO ISO200, but in all the new age DSLRs you get to see ISO 100. Some cameras have “High” and “Low” ISOs that are an extension of the standard Base ISO, which do nothing but ruin the image quality of your photos, so you should stay away from them.

Low Vs High ISO Noise Visibility

The photo below will tell you the difference between Low Vs High ISO. In which it will be clearly visible that in which I click the image with high ISO, digital noise is being seen in it and on the other hand, in low ISO, we do not see any noise of any kind. That’s why we are telling you that as much as possible you have to click the photo on low ISO.

How To Change ISO

After knowing everything, now a very important thing, how will we change the ISO.

The steps to change the ISO are different for each camera. Below we have given some common steps, by which you can change your ISO.

If you are shooting on “auto mode” then all this is set automatically.

To change yourself, first of all, take out of your camera’s “auto mode” and set it in “Manual”, “Aperture Priority” “Program” or “Shutter Priority”. After this you can manually change the ISO.

In entry-level DSLRs or Mirrorless cameras, you will have to open the main menu. You can set the ISO value by finding the ISO option in the menu.

Some cameras have a separate wheel for ISO in which the ISO value is written. You can easily set the ISO this way.

If you did not change ISO in any of these ways, then you can explore it in simple manual mode or ask us through comment.