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.
-
0:32
HDR Tutorial: Learn How to Capture and Process Images – Course Preview
You’ve seen the beautiful landscape photographs that capture bright sunlight and dark shadows. You’ve heard about the method, HDR: High Dynamic Range Photography. You want to learn more. In this HDR tutorial series, your instructor, author and educator, Tony Sweet, guides you through the entire process, from capturing the on-sight images to HDR processing at…
Watch Now >> -
2:12
HDR Photography Tutorial: Capturing Hall Mirrors
Photographing a hall of mirrors? Now there is a challenge! In this video, professional photographer and instructor, Tony Sweet, takes you into the old prison for a complex lesson in High Dynamic Range photography. “The lighting is difficult because of the skylights and mirrors,” Tony explains. Shooting with a 14mm lens at f22, he makes…
Watch Now >> -
10:23
HDR Editing Al Capone’s Prison Cell Photo
The six images have been captured, and now it’s time for processing Al Capone’s cell. Post production instructor, Tony Sweet, drags the HDR-processed RAW file into Photomatix, his favorite HDR software. When he runs into a problem with an overexposed skylight, he corrects with tone mapping and the white point point tool. He discusses saturation,…
Watch Now >> -
11:50
Processing the Tower Window
How do you go about processing the tower window, given the difficult lighting? In this video, post-production instructor, Tony Sweet, explains, “This is the classic, high dynamic range situation.” The tower window glows with bright, diffused light, while the cell block falls to deep shadows. You will learn Photomatix software and how Tony goes about…
Watch Now >>
“Changing ISO changes camera sensitivity” is a common myth. There is no way to change detector sensitivity after the detector array is made. What changing ISO does is apply a variable gain factor to boost the signal. This gain factor obviously makes everything brighter which is why we increase ISO to higher levels in dark scenes. Applying the gain of course also boosts the noise levels so we have to watch out for that.