Re: ISO settings?

On Apr 11, 6:21 am, "Vass" <mark...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
my recent venture into trying night shots has resulted in the pics not being
as clear as I would have liked
Going from info I read, I used the largest apeture I could and tried several
shutter delays throughout each shot.
The only thing I did'nt change was the ISO, left on 100 was this the
problem?
if this was raised then the apeture would'nt have stopped down so far would
it?
I see these really clear shots submitted, but I'm just not getting there.
the subject can come later, I want to get the camera right or I'm wasting my
time
help appreciated thanks
--
Vass

I'm not sure exactly what being not as clear as you would like means,
but if it means that they aren't as sharp as you would like, then you
have two problems. One is that virtually all digital images need some
degree of sharpening because of the effects of in-camera processing
and it is a routine step in most workflows.

The second problem you probably face is due to using the largest
aperture your lens provides. Almost no lenses are as sharp wide open,
or stopped down to the smallest available aperture, as they are in the
middle range. A decent rule of thumb is that the apertures of f8
through f16 will give the best resolution a lens is capable of.
Shooting within the sharpest range of the lens plus post capture
sharpening will give you the best results.

If you are using a tripod the length of exposure shouldn't be a big
deal for a cityscape. It's true that a long exposure, say over 2
seconds (depends on the camera), will have more noise than a shorter
exposures, most decent cameras have a way to reduce that at the time
of capture. My Canon takes two images, one blank, and uses that to
reduce noise.

If you increase ISO to get either a smaller aperture or a shorter
shutter speed, the noise introduced can be worse than what you get by
using a longer exposure. Again, it depends on the camera.

Vance
.

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