ISO Settings

Apart from Aperture priority and Shutter priority we have another setting that can be adjusted in all most all the Digital Cameras, and it is the ISO value. ISO stands for "International Organization for Standardization" and in the world of cameras it refer to the speed or sensitivity of the film. Even though the Digital cameras does not have a film in it, the option to adjust this ISO value is provided. This may seem a little confusing but it has its own advantages.

The Sensitivity or the Speed of the film determined the time for which the film has to be exposed to the light to capture the image completely. Sounds confusing ?!! Low sensitivity means that the film has to be exposed to light for a longer period of time than a film with a high sensitivity in order to properly expose the image. In digital photography the ISO value indicated the sensitivity of the image sensor in the camera. You can find more information about ISO in the following link

http://www.photography-basics.com/2007/02/what-is-iso/

The ISO settings has to be changed depending on the available surrounding light. High ISO settings are used in darker conditions as the sensitivity of the film to light is high then. Higher ISO settings can be used in closed indoors or at places where flash is not allowed. It is always better to take pictures with lower ISO setting when you have good light around. High ISO introduces noise into the image giving it a grainy effect. Look at the following image taken at high ISO value of 1600.















The image here looks fine, but when in at high zoom levels you can see the granular effect. This can be reduced by using less ISO value. Look at image below showing the difference in the image before and after reduction of noise. Here I have manually removed the noise from the image using a photo editing tool. Click on the image for better view.