Smudgey Loc: Ohio, Calif, Now Arizona

I am an old film photographer (and I do mean old) and I love the freedom of being able to choose my own ISO, instead of being restricted to the ISO of the film. This is one of the best advantages of digital over film. I rarely use auto ISO.

DanCulleton

When I am shooting non-static subjects in changing light conditions (which is what I most often am doing), I use a fast shutter speed and a wide aperture, and auto ISO. Motion blur and poor exposure does much more to degrade a photo than a little noise. The default chromatic noise reduction in ACR is more than enough noise reduction for most images. And a little luminance noise can be seen as enhancing a phot by recreating the grainy look of film.

gessman Loc: Colorado

I'm about to be politically incorrect on several levels so be fair warned. Looks like Chaman has dropped some of his best poop and departed. Pity he didn't take cthahn and a couple others with him. tresap23, here's yesterday's version of this discussion in case you seriously "just can't put it down..." http://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-452767-1.html. I don't care what anyone says, my old friend sharpshooter may have just shot his sharpest shot.

The biggest hole in Chaman's argument, which otherwise seems pretty sound if you happen to shoot like him and happen to agree with it, which I don't, is that if you tie yourself in a knot with no wiggle room, you'll just hang quicker. Often, we say "bif" like it's one word and means that everything we call "bif" is the same. Let me suggest to you the obvious - all birds fly at varying speeds over varying terrain and in varying light from each other and from themselves in certain situations. To presume that one knows exactly where to set shutter speed in all situations is not a good thing so setting a ridiculously high shutter speed to make sure you get the shot you want can make the difference in getting the shot or not. It obviously depends on what's important. I did note that he said, to paraphrase, when you need to use auto iso, do it. Of course, not doing so means that you may miss your shot and you may not know in advance that you're going to miss it. To presume that you will automatically get thousands more opportunities is also fraught with faulty logic. I can go weeks without seeing a bird where I am and have no vague notion where on this great big globe I might go to get a particular shot of a particular bird, how long I may have to stay there or where else I may have to go for that shot and, and I'm kinda a homebody partially because I have a big medicine box I'm tethered to, well, that and a slew of doctors, plus nice warm food and a soft pillow.

As is graphically suggested below, a lumbering Heron is no match for a Chickadee when it comes to speed and distance traveled and the difference is all but incalculable for an dumb ol' hobbyist like me who hasn't and isn't going to spend a single minute reading about sensors. "I buys my ticket and takes my chances." If Canon, Nikon, et al, can't figure out how a sensor works without me, they're in a bad place. Not normally a nitpicker, I have to say that different birds at different times in different situations present different challenges and nobody, repeat NOBODY, can calculate all the aspects of the exposure triangle and hope to come away with enough shots of a particular situation to make the effort really satisfying. A Heron may fly faster than a Chickadee but man alive, to scale they are at opposite extremes when it comes to what's required to get a shot of each as a bif. You can pan with a Heron but you often can't even see an in-flight Chickadee in its chosen cover environment through your viewfinder, let alone track one, change your settings on the fly, and come away with what you want which, of course, covers Shaman's exception of "when you need to." As sharpshooter said, to come in here and say "NEVER" about anything does all us poor ol' dumb hobbyists such a disservice, especially when your images posted for our viewing pleasure don't seem to show that you have really tested your theory in practice.

Whether the added shots below are quality shots or not is certainly debatable and I wouldn't insist either way. They're probably not some of my best shots but they are nonetheless pretty satisfying to me, a late arrival to shooting bif at 79. The Heron shot is fairly obvious, nice day, frontlit sun, steady background, predictable behavior, and no need to rush. I used a Sony a6000 with an adapter and a Canon 400mm f/5.6L plus a Canon 1.4x II. The Chickadee shot isn't so obvious. It was done under a thick leafy canopy on a bright thinly overcast day with a tree in the distant background, shooting north so no direct light but the light coming through the sparse Locust tree's leaves did offer something a little shy of a perfect background situation. The Chickadees were shot with a Sony a6000, adapted Canon EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS II. Not knowing how fast a shutter speed I needed to catch a fast moving little bird with jerky motions I set 1/4000 (max for the a6000), f/8 to get dof for either side of the birds, and auto iso with a max of 6400 set. I first hooked up a "lightning/motion detector/trigger and even with the sensor aimed at the bird flying in a perpendicular flight pattern with the camera aimed five feet after the sensor, the camera fired too late to catch the bird. The Chickadee shots were still underexposed at that and required that I adjust the Raw exposure and use Topaz DeNoise to calm them down some. I figure that short of catching a bullet piercing a water balloon or a plane hitting the sound barrier there's not much trickier than shooting a Chickadee and still the hit rate isn't good pulling everything out the a6000 had, burst at 11fps. You certainly aren't going to be adjusting any settings on the fly and there may not be all that many chances unless you want to keep coming back or you can "arrange" the situation.

Sorry - I've shown these shots a few times lately and I don't mean to be boring but they demonstrate several points in this discussion as they have in others. I'm not fishing for complimentary comments. What isn't realized by many in this, and other discussions in uhh similar to this, when all the technical stuff starts flying, many of us can be seen nursing a bad case of glazed over eyes, me included. Of course, "it takes all kinds" and is the nature of the beast in forums, but some of you guys who dig all the technical stuff and like bantering about it aren't really contributing that much that's useful to the novice's understanding of anything and it appears that you sure aren't contributing very much to each other's enlightenment when all you do is contradict and argue with each other.

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gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

I program one of my User modes on my Nikon with P Mode and Auto ISO and use it for snapshots in museums and other low light situations. I set the ISO range to the max. Turns my D7000 into a high end smartphone. 😜😜

CatMarley Loc: North Carolina

Lightness or darkness is the DEFINITION of "exposure". ie too light = overexposed, too dark=underexposed.

bclaff Loc: Sherborn, MA (18mi SW of Boston)

No. Photographic exposure is determined by the Exposure Value which is the aperture and shutter.
The lightness or darkness of the resulting photograph starts out with the photographic exposure but also has had tone curve and other adjustments applied.
Think about it, you can't overexpose a picture by using the making it too bright in Photoshop.
The exposure is baked in when you choose you aperture and shutter speed.

BebuLamar

While I agree with you the exposure can be altered by other means not only aperture and shutter speed. You can throw some more light on the subject and that would alter the exposure. You really open up a big can of worms. We had so many fruitless discussion about this subject.

Bill_de Loc: US

Most of the long posts in the discussion forum are about 90 - 100% too long.

This was refreshing from beginning to end. Thanks!

--

Chafe

I have the Canon 7d ll and shoot mostly wildlife, birds. I am in manual so aperture and speed are set and ISO is on auto. I don't always have time to change when birds move from shadows to sun so it is automatic. You can go into your menu and in the first group, second part is ISO speed setting. Under auto you can set a range both minimum and maximum. I leave it at the default of 100-6400 but, choose what ever you are comfortable with. For me, it works.

SharpShooter Loc: NorCal

Yes, exactly. bclaff is saying that a bullet will kill you, but I'm saying, so will the butt of a gun!!! LoL
SS

LarryN Loc: Portland OR & Carbondale, CO

I'll give you a practical example. I was shooting my teenage granddaughter's field hockey game in the late afternoon last fall. One end of the field was in full shade from trees, one end in full sun & part in mixed shade. The game was fast moving & I was taking a lot of shots. I was shooting with an f/2.8 lens but I wanted DOF so I set f/5.6. Shutter set at 1/500. With zoom lens the focal length varied between 70 & 200mm. Using auto ISO, ISO ranged from 125 to 2000. I got a lot of wonderful photos. There is no way I would have had time to also set the ISO since I was constantly changing the focal length to get the shots I wanted as the game moved up & down the field. I've had the same experience shooting lacrosse, equestrian events & other outdoor events where there are changing light conditions & I am taking a lot of shots. If lighting conditions aren't changing then I set ISO.

oldtigger Loc: Roanoke Virginia-USA

That is not always true, this is closer to being correct for digital photographers:
"In photography, exposure is the amount of light per unit area (the image plane illuminance times
the exposure time) reaching a photographic film or electronic image sensor,
as determined by shutter speed, lens aperture and scene luminance."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_(photography)

Once you have chosen shutter and aperture, the only way to optimise exposure
is by modifying the scene luminance with stuff like ND filters or lights.

RRS Loc: Not sure

Think about it. I know that it was in the old days, film, but guess what, you were pretty much locked into the ASA of the film that was in the camera. So now that was set somewhat in stone, you could always push or pull film if you had to. You only had two variables to consider, shutter speed and aperture. The results were totally different between negative and slide film. You learned to make those two variables work to get the results you wanted or needed. If I was to change from an ASA of 25 or 100 to 400 I would have also changed one or both of the other controls. There is a place for auto ISO and I guess for "P" too but time permitting I feel that you will get better results controlling all three points of the ET. For BIF I set a shutter speed that will freeze the action or slow enough to show action if that's what I'm after. I watch the light meter and adjust the other two controls if I see that I've blown out the high lights say on an Eagles head or on an Osprey. Try to learn something new/different on each outing and master as many options so that you have a choice when faced with different and sometimes demanding conditions. Sometimes it's more important that you got the shot, second nature, then no shot at all.

Bultaco Loc: Aiken, SC

[quote=home brewer]With respect to setting ISO, back in the good old days with film; we always set the ISO first. If I recall correctly black and white Kodak gave us ASA 25, 100 and 400. The 400 was grainy and I knew no darkroom method of fixing that. Of course some papers were better than others and some developers would produce smaller grain size. Color film had even more decisions other than speed. That is that some films were bluer and some were redder. Echtachrome could be pushed to a higher film speed by under exposing and then developing for a longer time.

Back then the exposure triangle said some shots were impossible if you chose the wrong film. I had two camera bodies with different films. I also carried a changing bag and would if needed swap out films marking the frame number on the cassette. I loaded and developed my film so the tweaking could be done.

We have it better now with good digital cameras that required intelligent decisions.

Again the exposure triangle is all that is needed to get the correct exposure; but the lens length and the three variables aperture, shutter speed and iso all determine the final outcome. I do not like photos with blur caused by a slow shutter. I pay attention to depth of field. This is when adjusting the ISO is handy. All the exposure adjusting takes time; maybe seconds, but the seconds can cost a shot. Then the auto ISO is handy. But if you are metering incorrectly then the fast shot is incorrectly exposed.

Side comment I always try to return the camera to my standard manual settings.[/quote


I love common sense. The subject determines which is best AUTO or MANUEL.

papakatz45 Loc: South Florida-West Palm Beach

I wonder how many great shots you have missed over the years because you were too stubborn to let the camera help you. More power to you if you are always that quick and that correct though. Another "do it all in manual" snob. The camera is a tool, nothing more or less. Learn to use it fully whether it is full manual or full auto as required.