Are you using Auto ISO setting on your camera?

garyrhook wrote:

1. Shadowfixer1 wrote:

   fmw wrote: I never use it.  It tends to choose higher ISO's than I need for the situation and that introduces avoidable noise.  I set ISO manually for the given subject or lighting conditions.

   I'm curious. How does it choose a higher ISO than you need? It chooses the ISO to make the other settings you have set work. If you want it to choose a lower ISO, you need to change either your shutter speed or your aperture. I have heard others say it picks a higher ISO than needed and I would like to know how that happens.

Maybe I'm nuts, but I would think the ISO value would be based on the camera's meter. And different modes could produce different results, right?

I find that, on my D750, the auto mode tends to choose values that are "hot" under challeging conditions (e.g. harsh mid-day light). I don't like risking blown highlights, so I'll use auto mode to see what the meter thinks, then set a specific value and validate it. After that I make changes across the board, as required.

Under less challenging lighting, I can often trust Auto mode. But I still chimp.

That's a puzzle for me since the camera adheres to the "exposure triangle". My contention is if the camera is picking too high of an ISO it's your choice of aperture and shutter speed making it choose that ISO.  It just doesn't willy nilly pick a number. If you shoot by the meter and want a lower ISO then you either have to open up the lens or slow the shutter. You still pick the ISO in Auto ISO, just not directly. You do it by your choices of shutter and aperture.  

fmw wrote: I never use it.  It tends to choose higher ISO's than I need for the situation and that introduces avoidable noise.  I set ISO manually for the given subject or lighting conditions.

Same here.
I come from days were most cameras did not have any auto settings.
I still set everything manual, except for focus. 
Without split image focus, it is not easy to focus manually today. 
Thank God for autofocus for old(er) people.

Shadowfixer1 wrote:

garyrhook wrote:

1. Shadowfixer1 wrote:

   fmw wrote: I never use it.  It tends to choose higher ISO's than I need for the situation and that introduces avoidable noise.  I set ISO manually for the given subject or lighting conditions.

   I'm curious. How does it choose a higher ISO than you need? It chooses the ISO to make the other settings you have set work. If you want it to choose a lower ISO, you need to change either your shutter speed or your aperture. I have heard others say it picks a higher ISO than needed and I would like to know how that happens.

Maybe I'm nuts, but I would think the ISO value would be based on the camera's meter. And different modes could produce different results, right?

I find that, on my D750, the auto mode tends to choose values that are "hot" under challeging conditions (e.g. harsh mid-day light). I don't like risking blown highlights, so I'll use auto mode to see what the meter thinks, then set a specific value and validate it. After that I make changes across the board, as required.

Under less challenging lighting, I can often trust Auto mode. But I still chimp.

That's a puzzle for me since the camera adheres to the "exposure triangle". My contention is if the camera is picking too high of an ISO it's your choice of aperture and shutter speed making it choose that ISO.  It just doesn't willy nilly pick a number. If you shoot by the meter and want a lower ISO then you either have to open up the lens or slow the shutter. You still pick the ISO in Auto ISO, just not directly. You do it by your choices of shutter and aperture.  

You just described the Manual shooting mode.  Where you set BOTH shutter and aperture.  In Program or Aperture priority or Shutter priority, with Auto ISO, the camera's programming does get to juggle 2 or more settings against each other.  So the ISO is free to go high or low.  For most of the cameras I have used, the tendency is to go low, not high.  Though with the weird DR / ISO setup on Fujis I have seen them go high.

Kelly

The cameras I have used when using let's say aperture priority and Auto ISO, base the shutter speed on lens focal length to prevent blur then set the ISO afterwards to zero out the exposure triangle. Maybe other cameras don't do it that way but I suspect they do. Most people have never really sat down and thought about what is happening when the camera makes these decisions. There is a rhyme and a reason for how they pick what they pick and it's not just random. That's why I say it's the photographer's decision on settings that make the Auto ISO be too high. Maybe I'm all wrong but an interesting discussion anyways. Like mates at a bar chewing the fat.

Of course the AE programming is not random. But engineers for different brands can have different priorities. Otherwise all cameras would arrive at the same settings for a given focal length. And that has never been my experience.

Kelly

Shadowfixer1 wrote: That's a puzzle for me since the camera adheres to the "exposure triangle". My contention is if the camera is picking too high of an ISO it's your choice of aperture and shutter speed making it choose that ISO.  It just doesn't willy nilly pick a number. If you shoot by the meter and want a lower ISO then you either have to open up the lens or slow the shutter. You still pick the ISO in Auto ISO, just not directly. You do it by your choices of shutter and aperture.  

I fully understand what the camera is supposed to do: based on the (manual) settings of aperture and SS, adjust the ISO value to get a "proper" exposure. At the risk of repeating myself, metering mode comes into play here. It's not a matter of getting a lower ISO value by changing something else, it's about the computed ISO value being too hot (IMO) under certain conditions. The camera is perfectly capable of computing a "proper" exposure with blown highlights. We hates that, and we would like to have a way to keep that from happening, ever.

If you match the meter as we use to say, metering mode makes no difference whether you chose Auto ISO or not. If it's too hot with auto ISO, it will be too hot anyways. That's why there is exposure compensation. It's all good. We just see things differently. I can set limits on my auto ISO which is useful. Carry on folks.

Shooting an indoor event with Anne Murray this weekend, I set the ISO to 2000 to get the shutter speed I needed. With the 5DmkII I encountered not noise. Went the great Ken Conger shoot his exotic animals, he often uses outrageously high ISO on his 1Dx and 1DxmkII to get high shutter speeds in low light.. I have talked to him and during several presentations he showed the EXIF data on the display. The numbers were staggering but the results are WOW.   Check out the eye details on his shots.  Ken Conger Photography.