Great Blue Heron and a Few Words on Auto ISO (Three Photographs)

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These were taken on a very windy day with the Heron in the middle of the lake. Almost back-lit but I liked the look. In my previous two posts I have talked about ISO. ISO for digital is not the same as for film. They have created a new standard for digital that reflects how much work the sensor has to do to catch the light (in film it measure’s sensitivity to light). Like all electronics, when you raise the sensitivity you get noise. Noise may sometimes look like film grain. Film grain was an element of the film and depending on how much grain you liked that was the film you bought. Modern cameras that have an auto ISO function are used by many photographers, removing a variable from their calculations. Some cameras do not tell you what ISO you are using in auto ISO mode , it just says auto, and hence my reluctance to use it. Now that I have a camera that does tell me the choices it has selected I am a little more comfortable using it.  The Auto-ISO setting asks you to set a minimum shutter speed and the highest ISO you are prepared to use. So for nature photography I seldom shoot below 1/500^th of a second and while I know ISO 3200 can be very noisy, in the darker part of the forest it means I can take shots. My only concern is that the camera may err on a higher ISO. But it’s an option and a good one.