DarkColdFusion

I don't use a gray card because I shoot raw so I believe I won't need it (correct me if I am wrong).

You need a Color target.

If you really want accuracy you also need to calibrate your display, and have the target in each shot.

But if your lights are consistent, you only need to really make a target for the specific lens/camera/lights you are using. Note the WB from that target, and always set it to the same

And you can simply apply it, and it will be pretty good as long as you don't really mess with the colors.

The mountains look small and not steep. Depth and distance does not come through at all. It just seems flat and underwhelming on camera, when the view I'm seeing with my eyes is the most inspiring thing of all time. I wish I could capture half of that.

This is like the most common problem people have with landscapes.

Your eyes have a 180degree massive view, but your center of vision makes really distant stuff very clear. You also mentally filter out all the junk.

So you end up experiencing this impossible wide angle telephoto effect.

What people do wrong is they use a wide angle shot from a vista point that works for human vision.

The flaw is that a wide angle image has all the close stuff very large in the frame, so it makes the very distant mountains look tiny in comparison. But a telephoto image can be narrow and doesn't give the sweeping vista sense.

There are few tricks.

1. print the image huge. If the image is a wide angle shot but printed at the same scale as it was in real life, you get the same sense of scale. Smaller works, but not as dramatic. Basically an expensive solution.

2. Use a telephoto or normal lens instead of a wide angle lens, but put something between you and the mountains for scale. You have to balance how wide your image looks, but you don't want the foreground immediately next to the camera. And you want a person, or a house, or something of scale far away enough that the mountains tower over it.

3. have really good light and weather. If the colors, light, clouds, mist, ect give a sense of volume to the space can make it have a sense of scale. Make sure you are higher up and looking straight on vs looking upwards. Still make sure the to not have the foreground.

Basically the foreground is your enemy. It clutters the frame with small stuff that will be larger then the massive landscape.

It depends on the camera but it's usually 640/800

At that point the camera is basically ISO invariant enough that it doesn't really matter.

I'll then maybe under-expose it by upto 4-5 stops. Which is like shooting at ISO 6400-12800.

But I don't risk losing highlights.

At these high ISOs the noise is mostly from the lack of light, and I don't see much reason to go much above that.

If a scene is so dark that it's needed, I've found it probably has crappy light that will make for a poor photo.

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

If you don't need to under expose, then shooting at the lowest ISO will give you the least noise.

Noise in photos is mostly from the light itself. But some of it is from the Camera Electronics, and when you bring up the exposure in post, you are bringing up that noise too.

A perfect camera could be shot at base ISO, under exposed any amount, and adjusted in post with no harm. Many cameras are pretty close to that over a limited range but not the entire range.

So for your example, if you have to choose to Expose at ISO 100 and under expose by 3 stops, or shoot at ISO 800, you will have less noise in the ISO 800 shot.

If you do not need to under expose the ISO 100 shot, you will have less noise in the ISO 100 shot then the ISO 800 shot.