Tips to Understanding ISO for Beginners

Understanding ISO takes patience, but it is the key to good photography. ISO stands for International Standards Organization, the standardized industry scale for measuring light. In Digital Photography, ISO measures the sensitivity of your camera’s image sensor. In this free video, world-renowned outdoor photographer Ian Plant gives you guidance on understanding ISO. As he explains, the lower the ISO number, the less sensitive your camera is to light and the finer the grain. Higher ISO settings are generally used in darker situations to get faster shutter speeds, but the images will suffer from digital noise and slightly degrade the quality. If you are in a shooting situation where the light is changing fast such as sports or wildlife, you might want to use your camera’s auto ISO setting.