ISO: The Third Creative Tool
By Dale Scherfling
7 May 2007
The world is a swirl of life, motion, texture and color and that's the feel I want to capture in my travel photography. And often that's the extra element I'm going for in my personal shooting as well - a feel, a mood, a sense of impressionism as much as pure realism in a picture.
We have a full bag of photo gear to play with in the search for 'feel' but one of our better tools - the camera's ISO control button - often goes unnoticed. While creatively selecting shutter speeds and aperture settings, we usually think of ISO as more technical than artistic. But it's this third factor - the ISO - that often emphasizes the most striking facial textures, color saturation or patina in a subject when applied tastefully, especially when used in conjunction with the other two tools.
Too many photographers fear 'digital noise,' and as a result, insist on keeping the ISO at 100. But a little digital 'noise,' like film grain in 20th Century photography, can suggest the lovely velvet softness of a baby's skin, or heighten the feel of grit and ruggedness on a steelworker's face in a photo. We went for the same type of texture by pushing film in the old days.
There's no law here, or absolute rule to predict what works and what doesn't, other than subjective trial and error. Tweak the ISO upwards until you achieve patina and quit when you get noisy - easy to say but not always that cut and dry, of course. Make your own tests and compare results. In the old days they told us film was cheap. Digital photography is even cheaper. That's one of the joys we share in today's digital age.
I sat in a park in Guadalajara recently and focused my 300mm zoom on the weathered face of a Mariachi fiddler as he turned in the afternoon light. Shooting when he was in open shade and holding back in less flattering sunshine, I systematically nudged the ISO higher and higher with each sequence. Moving from 50 though 1600, right up to the maximum setting, I then used the camera's image-enlarging capabilities to compare the results before settling on a final 640 ISO as the most pleasing. I came away with what I wanted - mainly dignity and patina - on a musician's timeworn face.
Results may vary in other circumstances, scenes and lighting but that's how we learn - by continuously trying, testing and pushing the limits. Keep the best and dump the rest. Choices are subjective and open to personal interpretation and sometimes it's a very thin line between the weather-beaten look you want, or simply distracting noise. But at least you come away with a selection as well as another learning opportunity. So go ahead, tweak that ISO; push the boundaries; fine-tune your settings. Remember, sometimes it is just noise.
But not always. Sometimes it's patina.
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