Auto ISO or Auto White Balance

P

parkmoy

Messages
708
Name
David
Edit My Images
Yes
My D40 gives me the option of assigning ISO or WB to the Fn button. I've chosen to assign ISO and leave the WB on auto. My thinking is that if the auto gets the WB wrong and I don't for some reason go into the menu to sort it I can correct it in RAW, whereas I often want the choice of selecting the lowest usable ISO even if this means using a tripod. In other words I don't mind the camera deciding the WB but I don't want it deciding the ISO.

I'm still finding my way round these settings so does that sound plausible/sensible?
 
Think that makes total sense yes. I shoot in raw and almost always in auto wb (i'm working on changing this in some shoots but it's worked fine til now) and i used to mess with auto iso but it got a bit annoying :) So I think you've got it the right way there definitely!
 
Sounds reasonable. I'm getting used to the auto ISO feature on my 5D mk II (the original 5D had manual-only ISO)..

From what I've seen, the camera will select the lowest ISO that gives a reasonable shutter speed/aperture combo, i.e. it won't select a high ISO just for the sake of it. In practice, it tends to select a shutter speed just above the minimum recommended to avoid camera shake, e.g. using my 24-70mm lens on 70mm, the camera will go for 1/80 sec. Given the choice, I'd go for a slightly higher shutter speed just to make sure the pic stays sharp, so I prefer to set a manual ISO.

Having said that, with my 5D classic, I often used to forget to change the ISO back, i.e. I'd be shooting on ISO 800 in bright sunlight! So having the auto feature is handy.

The white-balance feature on the camera is largely redundant if you shoot in RAW. I tend to leave it set on auto, and sort out WB in Adobe Camera Raw.

A.
 
Yeah I can see your logic. I love auto ISO though. You can shoot in manual, pick different combinations of aperture and shutter speed and let the ISO sort out the exposure. It has its limits of course, but it blew me away when I first noticed it would do that.
 
AlexW said:
Yeah I can see your logic. I love auto ISO though. You can shoot in manual, pick different combinations of aperture and shutter speed and let the ISO sort out the exposure. It has its limits of course, but it blew me away when I first noticed it would do that.
Click to expand...

Being a bit slow here - but can you explain that a bit more?
Sounds like something I'd like to try.
Cheers
 
parkmoy said:
I don't mind the camera deciding the WB but I don't want it deciding the ISO.

I'm still finding my way round these settings so does that sound plausible/sensible?
Click to expand...

Personally I prefer using the presets over auto WB.

There's just some simple guidelines to follow really, if you shooting outdoors on an overcast day use the cloudy preset.
If your shooting in daylight, whether indoor or outdoor, give the daylight preset a go, etc.
More times than none, using a more tailored WB to suit your circumstance will come up trumps over auto WB, that's not to say that auto doesn't have it's uses but I seriously recommend trying to select a setting based on circumstance first.

I agree with auto ISO, if your in a situation where you need to rely on a fixed shutter speed and aperture then auto ISO in manual drive is an awesome feature.
 
Most of the time I have the D40 at ISO at 200, set auto ISO to go up to 1600 and min shutter speed about 1/80. This seems to take care of most situtations.

A noisey pic at 1600 is better than without any noise but lots of camera shake.
 
No problem. Make sure your auto ISO is set and turned on. Set the camera to manual mode. The shutter time and aperture settings will now be controlled by you, but the ISO will remain on auto. What this means is that the camera will select the ISO required for correct exposure regardless of what you do with the shutter and aperture settings. The main limiting factor when I use this feature is the bottom ISO limit, once you reach this the picture will begin to over expose.
 
AlexW said:
No problem. Make sure your auto ISO is set and turned on. Set the camera to manual mode. The shutter time and aperture settings will now be controlled by you, but the ISO will remain on auto. What this means is that the camera will select the ISO required for correct exposure regardless of what you do with the shutter and aperture settings. The main limiting factor when I use this feature is the bottom ISO limit, once you reach this the picture will begin to over expose.
Click to expand...

Thanks - I'll give that a bash.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top