Extreme ISO Settings

Extreme ISO Settings

by William Lulow

I might have mentioned in a former article, that I have been experimenting with extremely high ISO settings of late. I wanted to photograph my granddaughter at her swimming meets which were held mostly in kind of dimly lit natatariums. I had to be able to capture the movement of the swimming itself which necessitated the use of pretty high shutter speeds. Further, I wanted to use smaller lens openings in order to get more depth-of-field and clarity to the images. 

So all of this meant that the only solution was to use higher ISO settings, pushing the “Triangle of Exposure” options a lot. There are only so many steps a photographer can take to try to create images under very low light conditions. In the days of film, photographers were limited by the speed of the film itself. If you were shooting Black&White, you could sometimes “push process” the film in a very fine grain developer so that you could use settings of around ISO1600 or so. But whenever we did that, we would wind up with much more grainy-looking images. They would be okay for newspaper publication, say, but not too good if you wanted to make a print. If you were shooting color, it would be almost impossible to make an acceptable image with very little available light. Sports photographers quite often had to add artificial light to those images. This is one of my early concert photographs made with little available lights, on film, ASA 1600 and push processed in Acufine developer:

Here is one of my earlier digital attempts shooting renowned guitarist Larry Carlton. ISO 2000, f6.3 @1/100th of a second:

And today’s efforts. Singer/songwriter Laura Stevenson. ISO 8000 f/7.1 @ 1/160th of a second, with a Canon 135mm f/2 lens on my R7 mirrorless camera:

Because I shoot many concert and live performance images, I’m now able to take full advantage of the settings with the new digital cameras. The mirrorless bodies also create sharper images because there are no prism mirrors moving inside the camera bodies. 

Look at the difference in clarity! Also note that the depth-of-field extends from the microphone to the guitar strap on her shoulder. I could have even gone further with this and maybe been able to shoot at ISO 10,000. That would have added a stop or two to the exposure, probably to f/10 or f/11. That would have been more depth than I needed, but if it was a more dimly lit room, it would have still made an effective shot. It is absolutely amazing what the new crop of digital sensors can render! Here’s another of my granddaughter swimming:

This one was made with my Canon 90D, a 85mm f/1.8 lens, 1/1000th of a second @ f/2.8 and an ISO setting of 4000. This lens is also my portrait lens and with an f/1.8 aperture, is a pretty fast lens. I also shoot with my Canon 135mm f/2 lens when I need to be a bit closer. 

My old film shots just can’t compare to these sensors today. I used to shoot with a Nikon F, with a 200mm f/4 lens and often used it wide open. I am continually blown away by the clarity of today’s sensors. I now feel comfortable using the Canon complement of mirrorless cameras and lenses at just about any setting I may need. My Canon R7 also has a 32.5MP sensor which is small step up from my Canon 90D (DSLR). So, the equipment has gotten better by leaps and bounds. 

Now, I often make images even outdoors with higher ISO settings just so I can stop the lens down to get the extra depth-of-field or stop sports action with shutter speeds of 1/1000th of a second and more. This one was made with ISO 1600, f11 @ 1/1250th of second. Camera was Canon 90D, with a 135mm f/2 lens:

So, extremely high ISO settings are not just for low light situations now. I rarely shoot with a lens wide open anymore and my images are sharper than ever. So, the higher ISO settings will permit you to take advantage of different settings on your camera. You can add considerable depth-of-field by stopping down your lens more as well as stop more action with faster shutter speeds. It’s incredible how this technique opens up more opportunities to make even better images.