Digital and Film ISO | Photography Basics

ISO is an essential component of exposure, it can help brighten an image when there's not enough light. Watch this video to learn what ISO is, how it works, how you can use it to improve your photography... and most importantly, how to pronounce ISO! Be sure to watch to near the end to learn a technique on decreasing distraction from digital noise in an image.

If you enjoyed this video please help support The Visual Center on PATREON:

Do you have any questions about ISO or digital noise? Post in the comments section of this video and we'll do our best to answer them!

Follow The Visual Center on Facebook— Let us know what videos you'd like to see next.

Connect with the Visual Center team on Social Media:

Interested in the equipment we use? Here are some affiliate links to some of our favorites...
(Amazon affiliate links)

#ISO #FilmPhotography #FilmtoDigital #Photography #TheVisualCenter

[lizlouisejohnson]

Legit content!! You guys are the best!

[seanjohnson]

Hi Trent, great video and very well explained!

I've recently took up film photography and there's something that is confusing me about ISO. Having learned photography on a digital camera, my understanding of ISO has been exactly what you described in this video, but when it comes to film there seems to be a difference - as written in this article I came across:

"So when you take a 400 ISO film (like Fuji 400 or Portra 400) and “rate” or tell your camera you’re shooting 200 ISO film, you’re telling that film to slow exposure down and overexpose the film in your camera. And vice versa, if you’re shooting a film with a 400 ISO, but rating it at 800, you’re essentially telling your camera to go expose faster and underexpose the film."

This seems to be the opposite of how you would change ISO exposure on a digital camera to increase or decrease ISO, yet when i change the ISO on my 90s SLR from 400 to 800 for example, the light meter indicates an increased exposure.

Am I just horribly confused or is there a difference between film and digital ISO in terms of underexposing and overexposing? Any ideas would be a great help!

Many thanks mate

[pedrofpsilvaful]

Thanks so much!
As an older amateur photographer that has been using only cell phones for a long time i am interested in how my knowledge of film photography knowledge translate to digital now that I want to upgrade...
Does it make sense?
Digital noise: it depends...

[paulsimmonds]

I was brought up on film and never used any film above 1000 ISO.. The grain was simply awful! I moved to digital around ten years ago and now have a Nikon D500. One aspect of digital ISO is pretty astounding when compared to film ISO. I have shot images all the way up to 50 000 ISO and the results are way better than those gained on ISO 1000 film! In fact the digital noise at over 100 000 ISO seems to be only marginally worse than ISO 1000 film! I am in no way saying that images taken at ISO 50 000 are usable (or usable above ISO 6400, for that matter) but the comparison between what digital ISO and film ISO can capture are quite profound.

[TheClaytonMueller]

What equipment do you use to record the camera’s EVF?

[mkshffr]

I am old enough that when I started it was pronounced A.S.A. 😇