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ISO, Noise, and Night
| ISO & Noise Press this button (click on the picture, right to see it larger) to open the menu of ISO settings. |
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| ISO basically is the sensitivity of film; or in our case, the sensor. ISO50 is great in snow where there is lots of light; ISO 200 is a great general purpose outdoor film, and so I got used to this with my film cameras; ISO 400 is great general purpose film; and ISO800 is good in the evening. Sounds simple? Well, yes and no. With digital we have a problem and in using higher ISO settings, like ISO400, 800 and up: noise. It appears as coloured spots in the darker areas of a picture, and even in some lighter areas. Compare the different ISO settings below. |
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| These cropped pictures were
well lit, and so there's relatively little noise in them:
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| As you maybe able to see, ISO400 is starting
to not look so good. What causes it? Most digital cameras at the moment, and perhaps yours included, has a small sensor. Film is 35mm, the lenses were designed to land a circle of light on a 35mm area. However, our digital sensors are usually smaller, resulting in less light information falling onto the camera's sensor, so an incomplete picture is recorded, so the camera has to 'guess' to fill in the gaps, and that 'guessing' creates the noise you see below. |
In good pictures, black should appear smooth, and not speckled like in these |
| How can we prevent or reduce
noise? Use ISO100 where possible, and cautiously move up to ISO200 and
ISO400 if you really have to. Use a flash if it's dark. And there's some
things in PhotoShop that you can do to reduce or get rid of noise, too,
though options are still limited and are cosmetic at best. Review some pictures you've already taken, and see if you can spot any noise in them. If there was a picture that could've been great, but you couldn't work out why it wasn't: check that, too. |
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| Night |
| Having discussed noise, well, I think
you know now, use a flash where possible and appropriate. Some cameras have a special colour
setting for nighttime portraits, check your camera manual to see if you have
this. Also, refer to the White Balance
section of these pages for other possible settings to use. Experiment with friends and family in the evening and see what you can do. Almost always, if you're using a flash, then you don't need a tripod. The pictures below were taken with the Shutter Speed set to 'slow' and a tripod was used. I usually use the timer, as just pushing the button with my finger puts a wobble in the picture, where as the timer won't. Also see in the 'How to take photos' section: Fireworks. |
 f10, 30sec, iso400, with tripod. Note the car trails. (No flash) |
 Very slow camera shutter speed, iso400 film, with tripod. Minolta 303si. (No flash) |
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