It is still a good advice to avoid unnecessary high ISO setting as it may mean that the exposure is unnecessarily low. The IQ/noise is determined by exposure and only indirectly by ISO in case where the ISO is connected to exposure via metering.
2 years ago
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I think the problem with falsely ascribing noise to ISO and telling people to keep ISO for that reason is it leads to a conceptual issue on how to expose in low light, which you see very commonly in beginners' problems. They try to keep the ISO low, and complain that the photos come out 'underexposed', and when they 'correct them in post' they are noisy, or they set too long a shutter speed and ruin the shot with shake. The whole triangle thing never gives any useful advice on setting exposure, instead just telling people they have to 'balance' the triangle, which makes no sense at all. I know this article isn't about the triangle, but its errors are rooted in triangle thinking.
DeletedRemoved userIt's almost like most talk about "ISO" (deliberately?) steers the punters away from considering the actual sensor exposure.
Surely the main problem with the article is:
"In photography, ISO refers to the sensitivity of a digital camera’s image sensor to light..."
and similar statements? If beginners believe this (& why shouldn't they as 95% of relevant Internet articles perpetuate this myth?) then they have no hope of ever mastering digital photography. Of course, they may have no wish to, but that doesn't make it acceptable to perpetuate falsehoods.
I'm aware the author may actually (wrongly) believe what she wrote and may not be maliciously spreading falsehoods. If so, it just goes to show the extent of ignorance on the matter.
If they have no wish to why would they be reading such an article? If an article sets out to teach it should not spread falsehoods.
Good point
Agreed
I don't think it's deliberate. I think that most of theses authors don't understand exposure, and are incapable of spotting the intrinsic contradictions in what they write. It's like they allowed Jim's comments and seem to have blocked mine and Iliah's. Jim just pointed out the simple fact, but they failed to see that the simple fact was incompatible with the article, so they just treated it as a clarification. My comment informed them exactly where they were wrong, and I'm guessing so did Iliah's. They can't cope with that.
I'd like to give credit where credit's due to Photopills.com, whose exposure article was the subject of a similar thread. I left a comment there, and as I result they decided to redraft and asked me to read through the redraft. It didn't end up as I would have rewritten it, but it will be one of the few Web exposure explainers that doesn't contain gross errors (even though the triangle still weaves its way through it). I don't know when they'll publish the revised version, but at least they tried.
The problem is you are all very poor science comunicators.
Yes, totally agree.
If you replace "exposure" with "image lightness", which are different things, in Iliah's linked article then the author of the article would be much more correct in what she wrote.
She doesn't seem to realise that for a given scene you can output the same image lightness using different exposures*.
* exposure - amount of light that struck the sensor per unit area while the shutter was open.
I think you are a very poor student.
Who is 'you all'? I'm not sure that the author of this article has ever communicated with me about science.
Lecturer asignment comment.
Enviromental Paper
Your are a phenomonal science communicator, detailed but not overwhelming with data.
This paper clearly demonstrates you will be sucessful in implementing your discussed professional action.the main problem with working geeks they have little teaching knowledge.
I read Jims comments, they didnt make any sense at all to the layman.
Erm - I was a University teacher over a period of forty years. My students generally did very well, and often said as much.
Your problem is confusing debates with people who think that they already know with teaching students that actually want to learn.You are speaking on behalf of your self here because extrapolating your lower level of comprehension to mean it must then apply to everyone else as well would be ludicrous 😊
They weren't addressed to 'the layman', they were addressed to the article's author who if she was a layman shouldn't have been writing the article.
Photographers do not have university level inteligents. thats the problem, why you guys cant break the pattern of teaching exposure.
There is no doubt in your case but to extrapolate that to mean it must apply to all photographers is just plain stupid and not true.
