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Hello and welcome back to Gmax Studios.
In the last two episodes we
saw what is aperture and what is shutter speed.
In today's episode we are
going to take a look at what is ISO.
If you have seen old film cans,
they usually had numbers like
100 or 400 written
on them, depicting how sensitive
the film was to light.
Today, we have the
same functionality built into our digital camera sensors.
With the push of a button,
we can make the sensor more or
less sensitive to light.
So an ISO like 100
or 200 would mean that the
camera is less sensitive
to light, and an ISO
of 800, 1000, or 1600 would mean that
the camera is more sensitive to light.
So, the higher the number, the
more sensitive the sensor is to light.
But there is a trade-off.
At higher ISOs, we get
something called grain or
noise in a picture, which
is often not very pretty.
Notice how the grain becomes
more and more as we
increase the ISO to the
point it becomes so much
that the photograph becomes practically unusable.
So why boost ISO at all?
Why don't we just let it
remain in the lowest possible
setting and just let it stay there?
Well the thing is this.
That sometimes the light that
we shoot in is so
less that even with
the aperture fully open, it is
not possible for the
camera to get a proper
exposure or the shutter
speed becomes so slow
that there is a camera shake
and the picture comes out blurred. In
these situations, there is no
option but to increase the ISO.
Also, the thing with noise
or grain is that it is more evident in bigger pictures.
So suppose we are sharing pictures
over Facebook, Twitter, or Google+,
these picture sizes are small, so
the grain is not that obvious.
Second, the newer cameras, even
the entry level DSLRs, have got such
good sensors these days, that
it is possible to get away with quite a bit.
Thirdly, noise can be
reduced to quite an
extent in post-processing software
like Adobe Lightroom, or Photoshop.
So, I would recommend that you test your particular camera and see till which level it performs the best.
Do subscribe to our channel and keep watching Gmax Studios.
In the next episode, we shall take a look at the relationship between aperture and the shutter speed.
Till then, take care.