A Year in Photos -- Annual Wrap-up (3 of 7)

Typically, I avoid high-ISO photos like I avoid the bad parts of town. I don't like digital noise. It lacks the character and aesthetic appeal that high-ISO film yields. Yet this image, taken at ISO 1,600, had a pleasing result with rich colors and a softness that suits the subject.

And one of the things I learned this year is that high-ISO digital photos can be aesthetically pleasing given the right subject. To understand this, we should understand a bit about how digital ISO works. A digital sensor can ONLY see light in one way -- the manner in which its physical and software parameters dictate. So with high-ISO images captured on a digital camera, the photographer is basically hyper-underexposing the image.

So, using complex algorithms I won't pretend to understand, the camera's computer uses what little light was captured by the digital sensor and extrapolates what the image might have looked like. And it gets this correct, but with substantial loss of sharpness and acutance. Now, for some subjects such as this mirror hallway with painted amorphous shapes or some portraits, this can yield a nice effect. For most uses, though, using high ISO settings should be an option of last resort.