Sarah-Jane's OCA Blog: TOAP Part 4: Exercise 2 Higher and Lower Sensitivity

Friday 7 November 2014

TOAP Part 4: Exercise 2 Higher and Lower Sensitivity

Take similar shots at both normal and high sensitivity. Choose a situation which is marginal.

Photo 1: f5.6, 1/320s

I have a used a camera that which offers 200 as it's lowest when in RAW (although I do realise now that since I only adjusted the contrast, sharpening and clarity by a margin for the sake of the exercise I could have used jpgs and then gone down to the lowest ISO number). The ISO is very good on this camera, nevertheless the noise difference is noticeable in the higher ISO images. Given that I quite like underexposed, blurry images this exercise is a challenge for me! But not in the way one might think.

Photo 2: F2, 1/125s

Same camera as above. I took more than 4 but only chose 4 and so ISO the steps aren't quite as regular but it does show the difference. I went up quite high to 2000 and the noise is high but I'm pretty sure made worse on this camera which is so good for ISOs by the fact I was shooting into some light. The very last picture shot at 200 ISO is of course the cleanest but is very dark although I like it and the fact the lighting is evocative of cosiness in a small child's bedroom makes me think it is fine that way - preferable in fact.

Photo 3: F2, 1/125s

Same camera again. It was quite dark just as the sun was setting so I put the ISO up very high. I started at 1250 and went from there. I deliberately chose to do this after working in a dark church this weekend. After advice from two other photographers I am now much clearer about how high to go with ISO but also how important it is to get the exposure right when you're using high numbers - there is already so much noise in the image at that level that any further manipulation in post processing needs to be minimal. The final image in this sequence is over exposed.