#ISO MEANING CAMERA ISO#
All cameras are different, but they all will include a common set of ISO values (commonly known as “stops”). What is ISO on a camera? Well, as explained before, it’s an option you can play around with. When a high aperture is needed or when your subject is in motion and you have to decide between a blurry photo or a bit of noise, you bump up your shutter speed.ĭon’t worry if this is a bit confusing, we’ll give you some example scenarios a little later. In the case of ISO, you’ll always want to stick to the lowest number possible. When you adjust one of them, the other two are also affected. The exposure triangle – graphic explanationĮach of the three elements of the triangle works together to basically lighten or darken your image. To understand how changing your ISO setting will affect your photographs, it helps to look at the exposure triangle. That said, there are plenty of times when you’ll need to use a high ISO to compensate for low light. You should only raise your ISO when you are unable to brighten the photo via shutter speed or aperture instead (for example, if using a longer shutter speed would cause your subject to be blurry). Raising your ISO will always add grain to your photos, also referred to as noise in the previous sentence, so the resulting photo might not be as crisp and sharp as you’d like, thus, rendering it unusable. There’s always a trade-off between a higher ISO value and the noise level of the photoshoot. It still is a camera setting, but playing with it can give your photographs a different look. When the industry made the switch to digital, the term ISO was adopted to describe the sensitivity of the camera’s sensor, since it replaced film in cameras. So, if you were shooting outside in bright daylight, you would buy ISO 100 film knowing that it would be exposed to a lot of sun.Īlternatively, if you were planning to photograph an indoor event, you would buy ISO 400 film to capture brighter photos in a darker space. The lower the number, the lower the sensitivity of the film. You may have seen rolls of film with a 100, 200, or 400 ISO. The acronym ‘ISO’ stands for International Organization for Standardization, a group that has created tens of thousands of technology and product standards, including those for film sensitivity.īack in the days of traditional film photography, ISO referred to the film’s sensitivity to light. Perhaps you have heard this term before, but not many know what the ISO abbreviation actually means. Increasing the ISO number will make your pictures brighter and help you capture good shots in darker environments. In simple terms, ISO is a camera option that will either brighten or darken your photograph. In this guide, we’ll explain the meaning of ISO and discuss exactly how you can use it to get the best results in your photography. These three settings work together in what’s commonly known by photographers as the exposure triangle. When it comes to taking a properly exposed photograph, three of your digital camera’s settings come into play - aperture, shutter speed, and ISO.