ISO is one of the elements that contribute to the exposure quality of a photo. As mention in the exposure triangle, it is one of the elements that need good understanding in order to photography good quality photos.

What is ISO? In general ISO is a value use to represent the sensitivity of the digital camera sensor towards light. The lower the ISO value, the less sensitive is the camera towards light. The higher the ISO value, the more sensitive is the camera towards light.

So why is it important to understand ISO and how this can help in photographing better quality photos?

A camera with wide ISO range gives great flexibility to the photographer to photograph at different lighting condition. When there's an insufficient in lighting condition, just by increasing the ISO value will help over come the problem without using a flashgun. Similarly when the lighting condition is bright just reduce the ISO to the lowest and you will have good balance exposure.

However that's a downside in using high ISO setting. Image quality from ISO setting will have a lot of noise and this makes the photo look rough. For a good quality photos, there should be minimum amount of noticeable noise. The picture should look smooth and sharp. Therefore many time high ISO setting is not preferable.

A basic rule of thumb when determining the ISO setting is always set the ISO to the lowest and compensates the exposure with your shutter speed and aperture. There are some suggestion that best ISO lever to use is between 100 to 800. Anything above 800 should be avoided.

So what happen if you need to use high ISO setting to photograph? Well try the noise reduction filter available in your camera to suppress the noise. There are also noise reduction software that available in the market that will help reduce image noise and produce better looking and smoother photos.

Therefore spent sometime to understand ISO will help you in producing better quality photos.

Need to further improve your digital photography techniques? Pick up this free digital photography guide.