Today’s Post by Joe Farace
I have never been a fan of Auto ISO because, based on my experience, the camera’s program seems to favor higher ISO settings with accompanying more noise in order to provide higher and more handholdable shutter speeds. I guess in my mature years I’ve become even more of a control freak but I hate noise, as much as I used to love film grain.—Joe Farace, from a previous post
Proving that a leopard can indeed change it’s spots and you can teach an old dog new tricks and any other cliché you may want to toss in here… I have now learned to stop worrying and (more or less) love Auto ISO. Especially when I’m shooting video.
Video: I’m still somewhat lost when it comes to shooting video part of that includes lacking a really good video or video-centric camera and maybe just a lack of video skills on my part. I’m also using a seven year-old version of iMovie on a ten year-old 5K iMac to edit the occasional videos that I shoot for this and my YouTube channel (and I guess that shows.). But all of my recent videos and I mean all of them have been shot using Auto ISO. Most of the times that works just fine, with the occasional snafu like Studio Tour that was shot in my home studio but be prepared to be disappointed if you expect high quality video.
How I Made this Shot: Streaky car lights produced by long exposures are always fun to shoot but I’ve never tried doing any while hand holding a camera before this series of shots made in downtown Orlando, Florida. This particular image was shot with the M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-100mm f/4 IS PRO lens (at 12mm) with a hand held exposure of 0.5 seconds at f/11 and ISO 200. I deliberately chose a low ISO setting to see how far I could push the hand-held capabilities of the Olympus E-M1X. This has always been a dream camera for me and I would love to own one, but I’ll wait until a used one with a lowprices turns up on KEH Camera or MPB. I’ve never used MPB before and if you have, please let me know what the experience was like
However, and you might have seen this coming, I tend not to use Auto ISO for every still image that I shoot. Yet I find that I am using it much more than I did previously This is especially true when the light gets low and I’m hand holding—I seldom use a tripod these day.* That’s when I’m going to use the Auto ISO settings. But there are exceptions, depending on the camera that I’m using as was the case with this featured image.
Finally, let me quote myself further on this subject: When these personal preferences,—and that’s all these really are—are combined with a more deliberate shooting pace that lets me handhold slow shutter speeds, sometimes aided and abetted by in-body image stabilization, I prefer to make more and more exposure decisions myself. And yes, in case you wondered, I use Manual exposure mode much more often than I did in the past too.
*I always use a tripod when shooting infrared and am using on-lens filters.
If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to buy Joe a cup of Earl Grey tea ($2.50), click here. And if you do, thank so very much.
Along with photographer Barry Staver, Joe is co-author of Better Available Light Digital Photography that’s now out-of-print but new copies are available from Amazon for $21.50 and used copies at giveaway prices—around three bucks. The Kindle version is really expensive for some reason; not Barry or myself.