Using High ISO

[Jeff D. Welker]

I've been playing with high ISO settings recently and wanted to share what I've experienced. Today's modern cameras and noise suppression software are tremendous tools for low light photography. From my perspective, it give me a third option for making exposures. Instead of having to compromise your shutter speed or f-stop, you can manually set both exactly where you want them and then use your ISO to obtain the final exposure. If this results in excessive noise, you can mitigate with software in post processing - sometimes very easily and with great results.

Below is an image I took inside the C-130J yesterday. I was waiting for my turn after the news videographers finished shooting to get some close-up images of the MAFFS. I was sitting in a sling seat and got bored. I noticed a subject across from me and decided to experiment while I waited. I set my shutter speed to 1/1600th sec, the depth of field to f-9.0 (a sweet spot on this particular lens), and the ISO to 25,600! These are extreme settings to test my ISO options, but it shows how far we can go if necessary. Obviously, I could have shot this at a much slower shutter speed, but I wanted to see what happened when I pushed things way out of the normal range. For aviation shooters like ourselves, we can use high ISO settings (when necessary) to let us maintain the shutter speed and depth of field that are most important to achieving the final image we were seeking. It is a whole lot better option (in my opinion) than shooting at vert slow shutter speeds and hoping to avoid out of focus images - much worse than noise IMO. Just something to consider.

THE COMMAND SEAT

[Scott Youmans]

Jeff, This is certainly a useful option that I think many photographers overlook simply due to previous experience with film, overly pessimistic expectations of high ISO, or simply not knowing there is a third variable they can use to their advantage.  Another factor could be not being aware of how to adjust for noise in the post process phase.  Old versions of Photoshop had relatively poor noise reduction capability whereas Lightroom's capability is outstanding.  Some of my favorite images were shot at ISOs in the low thousands, handheld, after the sun was down, from a moving vehicle. Try that with Kodachrome 25!  Yes there was noise but the shot would have been essentially impossible with film. With noise reduction the images are quite nice.

[Tower Guy]

At times the most important seat in any aircraft, that is why they cost so much!

[Paul Dumm]

First to use it, cleans it.