Blended learning task No.14 - Working with ISO

The truth about ISO is you've got to try it and experiment with it and the best way of doing this is if you have access to a darkroom and an old school film camera such as a Pentax K1000 is to shoot, process and print film... Get your hands dirty as such - feel and experience it for real. If you can do that it's simple, shoot 3 films... Ilford FP4 + which is a 125 ISO film, HP5+ which is a 400 ISO film and TMAX 3200 which is a 3200 ISO film.

Then it's simply a case of shooting similar subject matter in similar lighting and printing the neg's on 10 x 8 paper and you'll have experienced ISO through the process of shooting at a fixed ISO and you'll be able to see the impact it has on the image during the printing process and in the final images.

As a photographer back in the day when it took a great deal of time and skill to be good at photography, most people as far as I know had 3 main films that they stuck to and used for the situations that they were required to produce work in. You used these films and you got good at using them in all manner of situations. Where possible you would always try and shoot at 100 ISO in order to retain quality, if the light was poor, where possible you would either add light, move somewhere where there was more light, or do it on another day when the light was better, you avoided using a faster ISO film because you would lose quality...

"What is Base ISO?
The lowest native ISO on your camera is your “base ISO”. This is a very important setting, because it gives you the potential to produce the highest image quality, minimizing the visibility of noise as much as possible. Some older DSLRs and a number of modern cameras, such as the Fuji X-T2 have a base ISO of 200, whereas most modern digital cameras have a base ISO of 100. Optimally, you should always try to stick to the base ISO to get the highest image quality. However, it is not always possible to do so, especially when working in low-light conditions".

From - https://photographylife.com/what-is-iso-in-photography



Even now with digital I would advocate a similar approach, where possible always shoot at 100 ISO

http://photography-mapped.com/interact.html?fbclid=IwAR3O4Fn5QgTJjTHBP2d9edMVeSRbNwRMSil7SS0T2sX1-NnPyTXrF1o-U_I