From the course: Photography Foundations: Night and Low Light

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Working with ISO in low light

Working with ISO in low light

From the course: Photography Foundations: Night and Low Light

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Working with ISO in low light

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At the beginning of this chapter, we explored a technical definition of ISO and saw what happens inside your camera when you increase your ISO setting. Let's look now at some practical ISO concerns. When you meter, your camera measures the light in your scene and then calculate the shutter speed and aperture combination that should yield an image with good overall brightness. But then shows you these parameters in its viewfinder, once it's got them all locked in. At that point, you must take note of shutter speed and assess whether it's fast enough to handle motion, the way that you want, as well as being fast enough to prevent camera shake. If shutter speed is too low then your best option is to raise the ISO on your camera. Now, doubling the ISO setting will result in your shutter speed being cut in half, that is, if you increase ISO by one stop, then your shutter speed will decrease by one stop. It should be fairly intuitive. If the sensor is twice as sensitive to light, it can…

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