iso question

[mariakruse]

Pardon my ignorance but I am amazed, thunderstruck. gobsmacked, and in awe of the wonderful photos I have seen on this forum and really would like to know how these wonders are created using iso settings as high as most seem to use. I see iso numbers of 400 and beyond and yet no terribly noticible noise. How is this done? I was under the, obviously mistaken, impression I should keep my iso down around 1-200 in the daylight, but many of these photos are taken in the daylight. Does shooting at a high iso allow me a faster shutter speed so as to catch the birds in flight? As soon as I am over this unpleasant cold I will try this out, but wondered if, perhaps someone might tell me the secret.
thank you so much.
mariakruse

[Lance Peters]

Hi - to answer your question really depends on what camera you have - some are better at high ISO noise than others.
Doubling your ISO from 200 to 400 will also double the shutter speed. (Under the same lighting conditions)
As you increase the ISO noise does become more apparent - Noise reduction software helps with that - available as stand alone programs or plugins for photoshop and the likes.

I use 800 ISO pretty much as my standard setting and its pretty noise free (Nikon D3) it can shoot at 6400 ISO but there is visible noise.

Make any sense.

[Desmond Chan]

I was under the, obviously mistaken, impression I should keep my iso down around 1-200 in the daylight,

Have you asked whoever told you that why you should do that? Have you tried using anything higher than ISO 100 or 200? If not, why not?

perhaps someone might tell me the secret.

There's no secret. It's just how ISO, shutter speed, aperture work together when you press the shutter button. After that, it's your computer (your camera and your PC/Mac) and the software you or your camera use.

[mariakruse]

Thank you Lance, I have a Canon XSi. That makes great sense. I will try this out on the sparrows in the morning.
Thank you again. It was a great puzzlement to me.
mariakruse

[mariakruse]

Yes, I tried all of the iso settings when I first recieved my camera but since I was doing still life and food photos for a cookbook I saw no advantage at the time for the higher iso settings. When I began to take an interest in bird photos a friend who is a landscape photographer cautioned me not to go over iso 200 for the best quality in my photos. It seemed to work very well at first but this week I really wanted to try capturing some birds in flight. I only had a day before a rather nasty cold hit so I was studying the shots here to try and glean some information. I noticed the iso speed and was curious. Thank you for the information, I hope to try out the iso settings on some sparrows and doves today if I can.