Photography comes to us in varied ways and some are fortunate than others. I first got into photography using a Yashica J3. That’s way old for most people now who know nothing but Canon and Nikon. Some people may not realize it but some of the first interchangeable lens SLRs had screw mounts. This allowed manufacturers to interchange lenses but because of the engineering limitations, the bayonet mount that everybody is now so familiar with came to be.

The J3 was such a big thing for the Grade six student I was. It came from a pawnshop owned by one of my mom’s patients and (get this) was sold to us in 1983 for Php500. That was when I started this hobby cum profession. The light meter wasn’t always working and wasn’t even TTL; it was on the side of the lens. The fastest shutter speed was a mere 1/500th of a second and the biggest aperture was f/2. It didn’t even have a hot shoe. It had a cold shoe needing a flash with a cable to interface with the camera’s PC-synch. It wasn’t very soon that the limitations of the system became apparent. There weren’t any lenses easily available and the meter soon conked out for good. Now, the shutter curtain doesn’t fully close anymore. Sigh.

This brings us to one very important point: Photography is really facilitated by one’s instruments and how well you utilize these instruments. Fast lenses are crucial for many types of shooting situations and lenses with apertures as big as F/2.8 can really be helpful and sometimes necessary. The 50mm f/1.8 is one of the cheapest and sharpest lenses in any camera or lens manufacturer’s stable. It’s also so small that carrying one around makes you less conspicuous.

The situation is also helped with the use of high ISO settings. Now this is something that you should really try to test first. Different camera models exhibit different behaviors when it comes to ISO settings. Some produce very good results up to ISO 800 producing very little noise while others are safest at a top ISO of 400. If possible, it’s really best to stick with ISO 400 or even ISO 200. For lowlight situations, 400 or 800 would be good.

It’s surprising sometimes but it’s really apparent that many people still don’t understand all this ISO talk. Just to recap and to clarify, the higher the ISO number, the more sensitive your sensor is to light and therefore, the less light it needs to produce an image. I used to think that that was the way to go and that there was no reason to use a lower ISO. There is a trade off and that’s grain. Given the chance, for example, you should shoot at the lowest ISO possible to give you optimum sharpness.

Everyday shooting is okay with ISO 400 but for mission critical work (annual reports, advertisements, magazine work), ISO 100 would be better in general. Events photography is better served with flexibility in terms of exposure so ISO 400 it is again. This also works well if you want more ambient light in your photos. If your camera can give very clean images (read: minimal noise) at ISO 800 then that would be something to consider.

What happens if you seem to have no choice (not having an f/2.8 lens or faster) but to use ISO 1600 or even 3200? Use it. If you are restricted by a situation, then getting the shot is better than not getting it at all. Also, shoot in your camera’s RAW format. You will have much more leeway correcting noise if you use RAW rather than JPEG. Canon, for example, has a relatively good algorithm to deal with noise in-camera and this is helped by the noise reduction facility of Digital Photo Professional shipping with its DSLRs. (Canon users who haven’t even bothered to try this software should definitely give it a spin.) Another good piece of software to try especially since it has so much more capability built-in is Adobe Lightroom. Now in version 2, Lightroom handles noise is ease and aplomb.

What about noise that’s really noticeable? One thing people suggest is converting a photo to black and white. Grain has been one thing expected by some from black-and-white photography and you can get this grain-like effect if you convert a photo with a lot of noise into black and white. Almost all shots done in very low light will exhibit a good amount of noise.

Shooting unobtrusively is one reason why fast lenses should be used coupled with a somewhat high ISO. You lose the moment and/or mood if you use a flash all the time plus the fact that some people really don’t like it when they’re hit with a burst of light.

Given this situation though, you do have to keep a sharp lookout for ambient light sources. If you can wait until your chosen subject matter is under street lights, for example, then you not only add ambience, you also have a more dramatic effect. It can sometimes be a spotlight of sorts with your subject having an ample amount of light and everything else around is darker, thus putting more attention on your subject.

Try to see if your camera has a spot meter. For this type of work, that may be the best thing to help you. Remember that if you use the evaluative meter mode of your camera, the whole scene’s brightness level will be evaluated and though your subject itself may be properly lit or close to it, the rest of the scene will be dark and that camera will try to compensate for this and give you an aperture and shutter speed combination that will brighten things up. This results in a less dramatic effect that simply won’t do. Using the spot meter to get a reading off the main subject (maybe a person’s face) and locking exposure on that (on Canon cameras pressing and holding on the “*” button) will generate a much better photo.

Maybe we can deal with the details of camera meters more next week. See you then.

For feedback, suggestions and things you want tackled, please email me at  ericklirios@gmail.com.