Auto ISO

In the days of film cameras, once you insert a roll of film (24 or 36 frames) you are stuck with it. This means you are locked in to the ISO. If you inserted ISO100 you will be good for bright day time scenes but not night and indoor shots (unless you use a flash).

But this changed with digital cameras. With digital sensors you can change your ISO setting and even have automatic ISO. In film cameras you choose an aperture and the shutter adjusts to match or choose the shutter speed and the aperture adjusts to match.

But with digital cameras you can set both the aperture and shutter speed and the ISO will adjust to make the correct exposure. This difference is a significant improvement on shooting workflow.

My photography kit

Over the last few months I have thought about what I really needed, and more importantly what I do not need. Which is why I went on a selling spree. I sold three lenses and a camera body today. Two manual focus 35mm, and 50mm lenses, a wide focal length 16-35mm auto focus lens, and manual SLR camera body from the 1970s. The manual lenses were too cumbersome to use plus had some mold issues (so I didn’t want it anywhere near my gear. The wide angle lens just never got me any shots that I liked. And the SLR was full manual with no metering.

Essentially, I figured out what I used a lot, which were my 24mm f1.4, 24-70mm f2.8, and 70-200mm f2.8. These got me all covered all ranges I need.

The 24mm was a little too wide for street photography so I played around with setting my full frame body to crop sensor mode. This gave me a 36mm f2.1 equivalent which is, in my opinion, the best focal length for street photography. The other benefit (or downside, depending on how you look at it) was that the images were now 10MP only. For SNS like instagram and the like this is fine. To print out also it is supposed to be enough for A4 prints. Furthermore, I can work with the RAW files in my iPhone apps.

So I traded all this gear to buy an APS-C DSLR. This had meant I can get the 24MP images on my 24mm f1.4 now (my street photography setup) and get an extra 100mm of focal length on my 70-200mm zoom, all without losing image quality.

All three lenses work with both bodies so I have a 24–300mm coverage in focal lengths. And with the 2x teleconverter I have 600mm reach in bright scenes as well, all this with just two bodies and three lenses.