ISO Sensitivity & White balance

 5D Markii, f2.8, 1/50sec, ISO 1250, 70mm, Manual WB, Cloudy

•       In a low-light environment, when the flash is not an option (for distance or lighting quality reasons), a digital photographer has the option of either using a low-ISO (low sensitivity) setting with a long exposure time, or using a high-ISO setting with a shorter exposure time.

•       While the former produces high-quality output, the long exposure time involved imposes the use of a tripod (otherwise the image will be blurred).

•       On the other hand, a high sensitivity allows handy exposure times, but at the expense of increased numerical noise - this approach is in fact automatically chosen by most cameras.

•       The third option consists  of using a camera that have a noise reduction setting, try to stay under 800, except for camera like the Canon 5D Markiii  that can be used at ISO2000 without noise, I used Canon 5D Markii and Canon 24-105 lens for all the images in that post, another option to reduce noise is to use a plug in for post processing in photoshop like Nik Dfine2.

•       If you have no option, get your ISO as high as possible and get the shot! You can use the file later on to paint over it,  never miss a great opportunity.

White balance

Tripod, f11, 52sec, ISO 100, 105mm, auto WB

•       With auto white balance, the camera attempts to determine the color temperature of the light and automatically adjust for that color temperature. Many people just leave the camera set to auto white balance all the time. This is certainly the easiest option. Auto white balance works reasonably well , you can also change the setting like using cloudy for warmer colour. If you shoot raw you can adjust the white balance in photoshop, another option if you need the exact white balance is to use an Expodisc I don't use it a lot anymore, but if you have a lot of different source of lights it's a great tool to have. I always shoot raw, a big questions is what is best raw or JPEG  “JPEG are compressed files and are referred to as lossy files ”inability

      to hold and maintain the original format means every time you open and close a Jpeg file it degrades due to data being lost. If you use Jpegs shoot JPEG FINE, and save the file in a Tiff format.

Raw is a file format that captures all image data recorded by the sensor when you take a photo because no information is compressed with raw you’re able to produce higher quality images, as well as correct problem images that would be unrecoverable if shot in the jpeg format. Most camera even point and shoot have raw option, you can always shoot raw plus jpeg.

 f4, 1/40sec, ISO 6400, 105mm, Manual WB, Cloudy