Exercise: Higher and lower sensitivity

This exercise required me to take shots at different ISO settings. 

Firstly I had to look for marginal situations and take one picture at normal ISO setting and then one at a higher ISO setting. 

I chose to take these pictures near sunset to make shooting conditions more challenging.

ISO 100

I was able to shoot at f9 with a shutter speed of 1/60s which is really the limit for handheld.

ISO 400

I was able to shoot at 1/250s at the same aperture by increasing the ISO which is apporx 4 times faster.

ISO 100

I shot this at a low aperture f5.6 with a shutter speed of 1/6s of a second which is too slow for handheld.  You can see the image is slighly blurred close up.

ISO 400

This allowed me to shoot at 1/20s at the same aperture without creating too much noise but making the pictures less blurred for handheld.

ISO 100

Again this was shot at f5.3 at 1/10s which blurred the motion of the car but also the blurred the buildings

ISO 400

I was able to shoot at 1/40s by increasing the ISO.

ISO 100

Shooting at a low aperture of f5.6 at 1/8s

ISO 400

I could shoot at 1/20s

ISO 100

shooting at f5.6 and 1/5s

ISO 400

Allowed me to increase the shutter speed to 1/20s

ISO 100

I was restricted to shooting at 1/15s which was too slow

ISO 400

I was able to shoot at 1/60s which is acceptable for handeld.

Shooting these marginal scenes in lower light proved troublesome handleld.  Increasing the ISO sensitivity allows you to increase the shutter speed which in some of the cases made for acceptable handheld shooting. 

In the other cases above I should have increased the ISO further still in order to get a less blurred image. 

When I looked at the images up close those shot at ISO 400 were a little noisier but not so much that it took away from the image.  Increasing the ISO above 400 to perhaps 800 might have made for a faster shutter speed to use but it may have compromised the image quality a little too much. 

My preference for shooting these kind of situations is to use a tripod to get the optimum.  However, I know that this is not always possible and this exercise shows the effect ISO sensitivity can have on difficult to achieve exposures.