I was wrong. That's exactly what ISO stands for: International Standards Organization. Specifically, in photography and videography, it refers to the international standard of measuring the sensitivity to light for film and digital sensors. In the case of actual film, each film was calibrated for a particular intensity of light. This was beneficial for capturing images in different situations from nighttime to daytime, from indoors to outdoors and everything in between. This also enabled more creative license on how pictures could be taken. When photography was in its infancy, the photographer needed to know everything about his camera and how the light entered the unit. It was a far cry from the point and shoot technique so many people employ today. Photography was something taken seriously by those using the camera. Those that practice photography as an art today, aren't much different. And the measurements and settings aren't any different either, they're just Standardized now.
So that's cool right? Some trivia to... well, what good is trivia? What does ISO actually mean? Well, to properly explain that, I should really get into the Exposure Triangle. It's pretty important, and the things in it are very closely related.
Naturally there's three specific things that make up the Exposure Triangle: ISO, Aperture, and Shutter Speed. Each of these things controls the amount of light that reaches your film, or digital sensor, but they do it in different ways.
The ISO is the amount of light that your sensor (or film) is calibrated to receive. (A point of note: The size of your sensor is arguably more important than the amount of megapixels. A 10 megapixel camera with a large sensor will take cleaner pictures than a 10 megapixel camera with a small sensor.) As I learnt with the green screen, the higher the ISO the more noise in the image, the lower the ISO, the cleaner the image. That sounds like a clear argument for always using the lowest ISO possible, but that's not desirable either. If you have your ISO set low, say 50 or 100, and you're taking a night time picture with no flash, then all you'll get is a clear picture of black. In other words, the clarity of your image depends on the amount of light available. If you're taking a midday picture, then a low ISO will work well. If you're taking a night time picture without a flash, then you're going to want a high ISO to be able to see details in the image. Things to keep in mind for ISO: How much light is available? And how grainy do you want your image?
There's another word of mystery that I've been coming across: F-Stop. This turns out to be the measurement of Aperture, the second member of our Exposure Triangle. F-Stops are seen as things like f/16 or f11, and refer to the amount of light coming through the lens. See, the aperture itself is the opening of the shutter. When the shutter is more open, then more light comes through, when the shutter isn't open as far, then less light. It's similar to your eyelids, the more open they are, the more light comes in and vice versa. Just like your eyes, if the aperture isn't open far, you don't have as much depth perception. This means that getting the cool effects like focusing on an object up close and having the background blurred out (bokeh) is largely dependent on your aperture setting. Conversley the aperture setting can be set so things in the distance are in focus, and so are things in the foreground. Thing to keep in mind for Aperture: How much focal length do you want?
The last element of our Exposure Triangle is the Shutter Speed. Simply put: How long is the shutter open for? This can be a tricky one to manage, because the longer the shutter is open, the more blur you're going to get. To counteract that you may want to use a tripod or an image stabilizer. The flip side is the lower the amount of time it's open, the more crisp the image is. For instance, when taking a picture of a bird in flight, if you have a fast shutter speed, you'll be able to see the birds wings frozen in time; but, if you have a slow shutter speed then the birds wings would be a blur. Things to keep in mind for Shutter Speed: Are you trying to capture action? Do you want blur in your image? Do you have a tripod or stabilizer?
These three things together make up the Exposure Triangle, because they all affect exposure. This means that if you adjust one of them, you're likely to want (or need) to adjust one or both of the others.
In conclusion, the things I've learned from this is that my phones camera isn't as amazing as I thought. Now that I know about this, I just don't feel my phone camera is adequate anymore. :( Though, I have a better grasp on taking photos, using either my phone or an actual camera. I did take some pictures with my phone after reading about this. Here's one:
Reflection For The Day
By the way, since I mentioned it but didn't really explain it, an F-Stop is literally a stop in the sequential list of available aperture settings. Generally one F-Stop will represent double or half the amount of opening compared to the stop beside it. This is similar to the stops used for Shutter Speed.
I've only just scratched the surface of my photography learning. I recommend checking out my sources for further information.
--CGWise
aka Charlie Griffin
Stick with me and we'll get wise together.
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"To learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know." - Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
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Sources:
https://digital-photography-school.com/iso-settings/
http://www.brighthub.com/multimedia/photography/articles/72927.aspx
When I see ISO these days it means "in search of"
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Hmm... I haven't heard of that one. I'd be interested to know where that reference comes from.
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