Using ISO pt. 2

The ISO speed settings on your camera control how sensitive your camera’s sensor is to light ­ but how do you use ISO Speed in the real world? In ISO Explained we show you how to set ISOs up - if you haven't seen it yet then maybe now's a good time.

By using ISO speed settings appropriately for the circumstances you’re shooting in you can select the shutter aperture combinations needed to capture the image and make it look the way you want it to.

For the shot on the left I wanted to pull the waves and beach in close behind Lorna as a background which meant I had to use a long focal length on my lens.

Long focal lengths magnify camera shake so I’d need a fast shutter speed or the entire image would have been soft. On top of that it was a very windy day and I could feel it tugging on my camera - making the problem worse.

The key to that essential fast shutter speed was using my ISO speeds to achieve that. Using ISO speed settings can also help you out when you want maximum depth of field in low light, which I’ll also show you in this video.

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