Toronto Photography Meetup Group

So i reading that a higher ISO is needed when taking pictures in a dark area. Yesterday i was playing with my d90 and took a shot at ISO 200 in my room with the light on with no flash and the shutter closed for a few seconds and then opened and the pictures was a little blurry. When i put the pop up flash on with ISO 200 the picture was taken quickly and clearly. When i moved the ISO up to 600 with no flash, the shutter closed and opened quickly with a clear picture. Is the light in my room not enough for ISO 200? I was shooting on aperture priority mode.

Thanks in advance

yes

So would i only being using iso 100-200 outdoors?

I think you are getting limited responses to your question because it is one of those questions that can be answered with some quick google research. But in a nutshell setting a higher ISO increases the camera sensor's sensitively to light with the caveat that at higher ISO settings you will be introducing more noise (digital grain). So for indoor shots you have to either increase the ISO sensitivity or use a flash or use a tripod to get a 'unblurry' image. In aperture priority mode, at any defined ISO setting, the camera will decide what shutter speed is needed to have a balanced exposure. Typically, without using flash, an ISO of 400 or higher is needed to get a reasonable shutter speed to counteract camera shake - but it really depends on how much ambient light you have indoors.

Yes. Unless you're shooting at a location with bright lights. (ie basketball court, in a studio)

Here's a good tip to remember, if your shutter speed is less than 1/60th of a second, raise the ISO until it's above that. It's only sometimes that you might get away with a photo that's not blurry with less than 1/60th.

Or you could follow this rule which is just slightly more complicated..
Shoot with a shutter speed that's above your focal length. So if you're shooting at a wide angle, let's say 18mm, your shutter speed should be above 1/18th of a second. If you're shooting at 55mm, the shutter speed should be above 1/55th of a second. Rule goes for every focal length. The easiest way is to either adjust your aperture or ISO to get the appropriate shutter speed.

Definitely you need a quick overview on Exposure. Here is a really good link with photographer Mark Wallace for Adorama TV on Youtube. If you're new to photography with DSLRs, then his tutorials will be great for you to review.

http://www.youtube.com/user/snapfactory#p/c/BC5A73FEA8B7D7D2/31/KQw28-3LEU4

i shoot at ISO 100 about 95% of the time. I use lights to fill in the scene.

Your shutter "closed", as you say, because it needed to stay open longer to get enough light to make a proper exposure. The longer it is open, the more camera shake there will likely be. Higher ISO=faster "film" and therefore, faster shutter clicks.

Thanks for the info everyone....so much to learn so little time...lol

if the camera will decide the shutter speed for a balanced exposure, shouldn't the pictures not come out blurry?

your shutter speed is too slow to be handheld. as eric mentioned: a shutter speed of 1/60th of a second is usually a good rule to follow in keeping images from getting blurred from hand movement.

example - iso 200 aperture at f/3.5 and the camera says to use 1" shutter. your picture will be blurry. why? because the shutter has to be open for 1 second to capture enough light to properly expose your photo. unless you are a robot, it will be extremely hard to hold the camera still for that 1 second.

so back to your original question regarding ISO. you can bump it up to say 800 and now your camera may say it will use a shutter of 1/25. This is better, but you may still find a bit of blur if you view the image at 100%. what time constraints are you limited by?

it doesn't matter what the camera decides, what matters is how much light there is in front of the camera's metering system. Try a simple thing. Set up a light fixture on a table or something. zoom in your lens on the light and see what your camera in aperture priority chooses, then move your camera so that the light is just barely seen in the corner and see how that affects the choice. Finally, turn away from the light and note the exposure choice there. If you have a minute to read about exposure you will understand it. It's easy

In aperture priority mode the camera will decide the correct shutter speed to have proper exposure, not to reduce camera shake.

I thought Nikon didn't have a true ISO 100.

That's only on post-D3 models (D700, D300, etc). Prior to that ISO 100 was the base ISO of their sensors

MY d80 had base ISO100 and now my new D7000 is also base ISO100. I shoot at ISO100 95% of the time. Love it. Nice and clean...

I didn't realize they went back to base 100.... Maybe the three I mentioned, along with their variants) were the only iso 200 ones