A Noisy Accident
Have you ever had one of those moments where you’re taking pictures, and you find yourself surprised at what a remarkably fast shutter speed you’re getting for the current lighting conditions, and you feel absolute joy about it? Something like, “Wow! It doesn’t really seem all that bright yet I’m still achieving 1/500th of a second at f/22!”.
Then it dawns on you.
You had set the ISO to a relatively high value earlier so you could get a faster shutter speed under low light conditions, and you forgot to dial it back down. I can hear photographers who are fans of film saying they never have to worry about this problem. Sure, that’s true on some level. For one thing they don’t have to worry about noise per se, only significant film grain with high ISO films, and film grain is more “organic” and thus not automatically offensive to a photographer. But film photographers also don’t have the option of changing ISO on a per-shot basis. You have to put a different roll of film in the camera to get a different ISO. Digital offers much more flexibility and freedom.
Suddenly I’m reminded of my mom telling me when I was a teenager that “with freedom comes responsibility”. In this context, the freedom of changing your ISO setting from one shot to the next as you see fit comes with the responsibility to remember to change it to a lower value when you no longer need a high ISO. When you forget to reset your ISO and thus use a setting that is higher than you need, you’ll likely end up with noise in your image that could have been avoided.
It would be nice if we could decide to simply never forget to reset the ISO, but that’s just not realistic. So we get to one of my pet peeves (I have a lot of them, and many will be covered in my upcoming book, which I’ll talk about very soon when it is in print). Here’s the pet peeve: Why doesn’t my digital camera give me the option to automatically reset the ISO to a designated value (probably 100) whenever I cycle the power on my camera? For me, at least, using a high ISO setting is an exception used in special circumstances. Even though todays digital SLRs do a great job of noise suppression, I’d rather use a low ISO setting to ensure the best results. So a feature like this would be a huge benefit to me.
I’m curious what other features photographers would find helpful in their digital cameras. Perhaps we could put a list together, so camera manufacturers could spend less time adding more megapixels to the imaging sensor, and more time giving us cool new features that would improve our photographic experience.
Explore posts in the same categories: Pet Peeve, Photography, Digital
April 18th, 2008 at 7:36 am
I too have longed for the ISO reset, though I never turn my camera off (just let it go to sleep). Also resetting AEB, flash exposure compensation and others would be nice. At least the new rebel XSi will display ISO in the viewfinder I’ve read.
A mode that set the exposure so that no more than 1% of the viewfinder was burned out (It sounds like the new canons have something similar)
The ability to choose a camera “user”, i.e. set it to “bryn” mode and it records in the metadata it was me taking the pictures (for when you are sharing a camera with someone)
Focus bracketing (you have fast continuous shooting these days, why not rattle off multi focus in case you don’t have it quite right)
built in gps, and compass, microphone (to record ambient sound before and after)
ability to mark a photo as a high rating in the camera that puts it in file metadata so you can jump to it when looking at your photos
ability to specify what shutter speed/iso the camera uses while your flash is recharging (ie it switches to a different mode while a flash is connected but not ready to fire)
April 18th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Oh and charging off of usb (even if it’s super slow) and/or having support for universal chargers like those made by targus or igo so I don’t have to carry 4 chargers for my video camera, my point and shoot, my slr and my backup slr.
April 18th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Any Canon camera that includes Custom settings does exactly this. for example on my 40D there are 3 Custom functions. I have each of them setup for a default style of shooting (C1 is for action and wildlife, C2 is for landscapes, and C3 is for HDR). Each of these Custom settings memorizes ever setting that can be changed on the camera. If you make any changes while using one of these settings, the changes are only temporary. After changing to a different mode or after a power recycle the camera returns to the original memorized settings.
So let’s say you were shooting basketball inside (my custom setting C1 for action) and you decided that instead of Auto ISO you wanted to set your ISO to 1600 to ensure faster shutter speeds, the next time you power up the camera, C1 will return to the originally memorized setting (Auto ISO for me).
This is the perfect solution to your problem…
April 18th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
While the custom settings are handy I still would like to have the ISO displayed like the aperture and shutter speed in the viewfinder so I could see it when I am setting my other settings, but I would also like to have the setting as a quick selection on the camera as opposed to buried within (I own a Canon). That way I can change it with a flick of the finger.
T.
April 19th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Here’s my wish list of features I’d like to see on a DSLR:
1) The ability to set the duration the viewfinder information display. In the same way many cameras allow control of the display time of the last exposure on the LCD, I’d like to be able to set the viewfinder display duration.
2) A mirror lock-up button/switch on the surface of the camera body. I shoot mostly field macro work and need to reduce camera vibration. Yes, this feature can be set via configuration settings accessed by burrowing down into the camera’s menu options, but I’d like this option be easy and quick.
3) Make depth of field preview buttons convenient. I’ve never understood by this useful function was made so difficult to access by poorly placed tiny buttons.
4) Add more features to electronic cable releases. By this, I mean add a button to lock-up the mirror and another to perform depth of field previews. The multi-pin cable release I use already has extensive exposure features such as timer, delay, duration, and repeat functions built in. Adding a couple of more buttons wouldn’t take up that much space but would enhance the shooting convenience factor. Having these controls available in a device, such as a cable release, would eliminate the need to remove your eye from the viewfinder to locate the necessary button/switch on the body.
May 15th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Resetting the ISO, and any number of what the camera owner wants to apply should be a really easy function that the MFG’s could dial in to the menu settings preferences.
I might like it if under my preference settings, I could just rotate out of AF to TV then back to AF and all my presets would return to the settings I customized. This could be done without Powering Off/On. Instant back to normal. And as Sean has said I could use the C1 (Custom 1) setting.