Auto ISO Opinions Wanted

[DrJohn]

What is your opinion of using auto ISO?

John

[adwb]

Depends I& you shoot raw or jpeg gets a different answer from me

[JCC]

I don't use it.

Where this fails is if someone is in a spotlight, it will often overexpose them attempting to bring the background up.

Also shooting against a white backdrop when you are trying to knockout the background.

 

JCC

[thefsb]

18 hours ago, DrJohn said:

What is your opinion of using auto ISO?

I love it.

Most commonly my settings for auto exposure are:

• A mode
• ISO AUTO
• ISO AUTO range 100-12800
• Custom Key C1 is assigned to ISO AUTO Min. SS

Then I set F-stop and Min SS according to scene requirements and let the camera choose exposure with ISO AUTO.

Why do you ask?

[thefsb]

12 hours ago, JCC said:

Where this fails is if someone is in a spotlight, it will often overexpose them attempting to bring the background up.

Also shooting against a white backdrop when you are trying to knockout the background.

Isn't that true of auto exposure in general? There's an AE compensation knob on the top of the camera for situations when you need it such as you describe.

[DrJohn]

I ask because I'm curious. I never use auto ISO. But then, I'm used to the film era... We had three adjustments: focus, shutter speed, and aperture. To change ASA, we had to use a different film.

John

[thefsb]

2 hours ago, DrJohn said:

I ask because I'm curious. I never use auto ISO. But then, I'm used to the film era... We had three adjustments: focus, shutter speed, and aperture. To change ASA, we had to use a different film

Right. I was pretty slow to switch to digital myself. It was only when I was ready to splash the cash for really good digital gear that I started to enjoy it. I hated the digicams I had until then.

Digital gave us adjustable ISO, which is a boon.

Later (last few years) sensors have such good noise characteristics that we can concentrate on using f-stop and shutter for creative control rather than just exposure control. This is also a boon.

A friend recently got a DSLR and a text book to go with it (decent book actually). I remember talking about how to control exposure for the kind of things she would be doing. I explained that M mode is actually easy to use. Set ISO to Auto, I demonstrated,  and it works every time. She pulled out the book and found the page where it says to use the smallest ISO possible. Foiled!