Photo of the Week - Week 4

This week's topic - shooting at a high ISO.

I typically try to shoot the lowest ISO possible (usually 100) in order to get the cleanest image possible. That said, sometimes it just isn't possible to shoot that low. Since I haven't used my higher ISO settings that much on my camera, I figured I needed to play around with it a bit and try to push my camera a bit to see what it can do.

I usually shoot in manual mode and changing the ISO was just one extra thing to do. Besides, I usually want to shoot at ISO 100 so that just left me with the aperture and shutter speed to get the exposure I wanted. However, one of the reasons I bought my new camera last spring was (supposedly) to be able to shoot cleaner images at a high ISO. This past week I finally got around to it and have found some rules of thumb I like for shooting decent images at a higher ISO.

My general settings have been to shoot in Aperture Priority mode (Av), with the exposure compensation set to over expose slightly: +1/3 to +1 stop.

I did use Canon Digital Photo Professional 3.8.1 (came with the camera) to reduce the chromatic noise just a little bit, but not much. When I previously shot higher ISOs, I would use Noiseware, but I generally used much stronger noise reduction.

Follow the links through to view the full-size image via Flickr.

Shutter Speed: 1/5s
Aperture: F8.0
ISO:1600
Exposure Compensation: +1
Focal Length: 50mm
Lens: Tamron 17-55mm

Shutter Speed: 1/500s
Aperture: F5.6
ISO: 3200
Exposure Compensation: +1/3
Focal Length: 50mm
Lens: Tamron 17-55mm

Shutter Speed: 1/20s
Aperture: F5.6
ISO: 3200
Exposure Compensation: +1
Focal Length: 47mm
Lens: Tamron 17-55mm

The trade-off: With the noise reduction, the image may not be as sharp as one shot at ISO 100 with no noise reduction. But then, I don't plan on printing any of these poster-sized ... so that works for me.

But just as an example, contrast the above images (full-size view) with the below, which is shot at a low ISO and lit with a softbox:

Shutter Speed: 1/100s
Aperture: F5.6
ISO:100

Focal Length: 50mm
Lens: Tamron 17-55mm