I plonked my camera down on my tripod, and looked at the settings I had my camera set to. I noticed that the ISO I had it set on was the highest that it could get to. I'm not a photographer. I don't really aspire to be one either. Photography is just a hobby of mine, and one that I don't really know all to much about, to be honest. A memory occurred in my brain at that moment. I remember someone in one of my film classes (I'm not entirely sure who it was now) talking about the gain on a film camera (movie film, not 35mm film). For those that don't really know, let me explain it in terms that I would understand - "gain" is a setting that lets more light in to expose the shot. When you have it set right up, you get "grain", and it just makes your shot look terrible. Trust me, I've seen it. In mine, and my classmates' films. They mentioned a dSLR's version of gain is "ISO". I had not known that, all the time before I hadn't really known much about what ISO is at all. So, after remembering that little sentence in passing, I decided to take a couple of test shots, one with high ISO, and one with low ISO.
ISO - 12800
f/5.6, exposure 1/80
ISO - 100
f/5.6, exposure 1.3 seconds
You can see the difference, right?? The first picture has a heck of a lot of grain, but the second is clear as diamond (except for the thingys that I don't know what are called so I'm just going to call them circles. I don't know why Blogger keeps downgrading my photos, it does not looks like this on my desktop). Anyway. I taught myself a lesson. "Don't have the ISO set way up when you're shooting dark photos." I then proceeded to shoot every single other photo that night with it waayyyyy down. :)
A random question for you all before I leave - Why is it called "Gain" when it produces "Grain?" Is it a typo that stuck around? I don't know.
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ISO 100, f/5.6, exposure 2 seconds
Thank you, Kimberly – some worthwhile experimentation here. Well done.
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