I received a few emails about my recent posts about the X100s. It is a deceivingly good camera. Altough it has the form factor of a small, point-and-shoot camera, it has many of the controls of a larger camera, and can be just as complex to use. With the smaller body, many of the functions are more menu driven as there is just not that much space to add buttons or switches on the body. This can slow down your shooting if you have to change settings frequently, but they have tried to build in shortcuts. There are specific buttons that you can assign to settings that you access more frequently. The Fn button near the shutter release can change ISO settings very quickly in lieu of a dedicated ISO button on DSLR bodies.
Speaking of ISO and noise, this camera also has a big advantage over smartphone or point-and-shoot cameras. Behind the lens is a large APS-C sensor which is equivalent to the sensor size of many popular DSLR cameras. The larger the sensor, the better the low-light performance of the camera. A few have asked for some 100% crops of photos at the higher ISOs. Here is an example of the night time shoot at the Capitol building.
Even at 100%, the noise is not terrible especially considering the ISO is up to 800. This is also with the default noise reduction settings from Lightroom. If I were to print this image at a size higher than 16×20, I would have to do some more work, but at anything lower, the noise would not be viewable from a normal display distance. Another thing to note is that the photo above is sharp event at 100% with a shutter speed of 1/15th! It is much easier to hand hold a smaller, lighter body at slower shutter speeds.
For my professional photography career, I have been digital all the way. I am not nostalgic about the hey day of using film when capturing images. In the few times that I have used film, there is not much different in the way that the camera works. With later Nikon SLRs, the mechanics and ergonomics are almost exactly the same without the screen on the back for viewing images, of course. And then there is the ISO button.
One setting that is different on digital SLRs compared to film is the ISO button. This setting relates to the light sensitivity setting of the sensor and what I think what allowed digital photography to surpass film in quality and usability. Here is the reason why. ISO refers to the International Organization of Standards that creates the universal criteria for a variety of measures.
ISO Rating
The lower the ISO number on your camera, the LESS sensitive your sensor is to light (ie 100 or 200) . The higher the ISO number, the MORE light sensitive your sensor is to the light hitting the back of the camera (ie 1600, 3200 and higher). Back in the film days, you used to have to choose your film speed when you were at the store. This corresponds to the ISO setting in digital cameras. They would sell photos for bright daylight which would be ISO 100 or ISO 200, or you would choose an all-around film which would be rated at ISO 400, or you could get action film which usually would be black and white and be rated for 1600 or 3200.
Why would you choose one over the other? In photography there are always trade-offs. In film, it is grain, in digital capture, it is digital noise. As your sensitivity goes up, so does the amount of grain or noise in your image. The lower ISO values give you the cleanest image without little dots of noise that do not accurately have represent the scene. Higher ISO values may introduce noise or grain artifacts, but it is possible for you to capture a sharp image with faster shutter speeds. Sometimes getting ANY image no matter how grainy is better than getting a completely blurry image without any grain. This was important for photo journalists that needed to get sports shots, or images in bad light without added lighting, and still be sharp enough for printing in the newspaper. Here is an example of a photo taken with Kodak T-Max that is ISO 3200:
Yes, there is lots of grain in the image! But considering there was no added flash, and using only the ambient light from lamps in the room, you do get a sharp image, and you can make out the subject. Here is a 100% crop from this frame really showing the grain from the film:
With digital photography changing at a rapid pace, the ability to shoot at higher ISO has become the next technological marking stick. Manufacturers have been making cameras that can shoot at higher and higher sensitivities. The magic in new hardware and software allows for this increased sensitivity without adding much noise to the image. Here is an example from a DSLR at ISO 8000 – almost 2 stops more sensitive than the film images above!
The noise/grain is really minimized. From these developments, it really does not make as much sense to shoot film especially for sports or event photographers. This really changes what kinds of situations I can shoot, and what equipment I need to make good images. All digital cameras have an ISO setting, even the iPhone. You may not be able to control it, but you can go into the data for each of your images and see what was the sensitivity for each.
Camera Settings
At the beach on a bright sunny day, the ISO will be 50 or 100, and the computer in the camera will push the ISO up as it gets dark. With this changing automatically in point and shoot or smartphone cameras, you no longer have to worry about sensor sensitivity, but know that as it gets better, so will the quality of your indoor or lower light photos. Rest assured, the sensors in DSLRS are much larger making them much better, but it shows how much people want better low light photos for what they want to photograph.
