Photography

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A place to politely discuss the tools, technique and culture of photography.

This is not a good place to simply share cool photos/videos or promote your own work and projects, but rather a place to discuss photography as an art and post things that would be of interest to other photographers.

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Can someone explain how ISO/Base ISO functions these days? (alien.top)

submitted 11 months ago by Spirit-Subject@alien.top to c/photography@viewfinder.pro

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So generally, I’ve always understood that the lowest ISO is best to shoot at. Though with newer cameras, they usually have a higher base ISO and in some cases Dual ISO.

I usually work with the R5C, even for photography. It feels odd to take portraits at 800 ISO because I’ve always been told it should be as low as possible.

So does the Base ISO system, negate the need to shoot at lowest ISO for the clearest and least grainy image?

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[–] Raveen396@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

From an electrical engineering perspective, you’re both right.

ISO in digital sensors is an amplification of the analog signal output by the photovoltaic sensor before it is converted to digital. Amplifiers indiscriminately amplify both noise and your signal of interest. In that sense, he’s right that a high quality sensor with little inherent noise will produce a less noisy image at high ISO than a low quality sensor with a lot of inherent noise. A high ISO (amplification) will serve to amplify noise existing in your signal.

However, amplifiers also have a quality known as “noise figure”, in that all non-ideal amplifiers will add some noise to a signal. So you are also right in that there is some amplifier added noise that is possibly more visible when you increase your ISO, because amplification tends to reduce your maximum theoretical dynamic range through the additive noise, not increase it.

All that being said, this is all semantics and in practice I think the comment you’re replying to is correct, but is a bit loose with some technical concepts that don’t really matter in practice.