So you’ve been searching around looking for camera ISO settings, what is ISO setting, how to change ISO setting, what else does ISO setting effect, and probably many other questions related to the photography exposure setting ISO speed. Well in this DSLR tutorial on what is DSLR exposure ISO setting, you will learn the answers to all your questions related to ISO exposure settings.
ISO speed exposure adjustment on your DSLR camera is adjusting how sensitive your DSLR camera’s sensor is to light. The higher the ISO speed the more sensitive to light your camera’s sensor will be which will result in a brighter photo. The side effect of using ISO speed on a digital SLR camera is that increased ISO speed also produces more noise on the sensor, which results in more noise on your photograph. Most DSLR camera’s sensors are pretty good these days, even an entry level DSLR camera can take a photo at 1600 ISO speed and still print off a flawless 11″x14″ print. You will not see any noise on this print, but if you open your favorite photo editing software or photo viewing software and zoom in to 100% you will see a lot of noise.
You will usually see more noise from higher ISO speed settings in darker areas of the photos, shadows, hair, etc. You can use photo processing software to remove some or all of the noise at the price of a softer looking photo and/or slightly less details.
I try to keep my ISO speed as low as I can and still be able to set correct exposure settings using shutter speed and aperture settings, without getting motion blurred photos. If I notice that I’m using too slow of a shutter speed to get the correct exposure I want that will compromise the photo’s quality from a possible motion blur, I will up my ISO speed setting to the next available ISO speed setting.
If you are afraid of your DSLR camera having too much noise at higher ISO speeds, just take a few low light photos of the same composition using each of the higher ISO speeds, 800, 1600, and 3200 and print them and see if you can see the noise on your prints. See what ISO speeds are acceptable to you for the quality of prints you want to produce.
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