“The International Standards Organization”: Photography Guidelines

The International Standards Organization is an organization that started in the late 1940’s with a
goal to create an even playing field for all industries across the globe. The abbreviation “ISO” is derived
from the Greek word “isos”, which means equal. In 1946, 65 representatives from 25 different countries
met in London to discuss the future of standardization within industry, thus starting the International
Standards Organization. Currently there are over 23,000 set standards with thousands more
refinements/revisions each.

When talking about photography, the ISO is referring to your camera’s sensitivity to light. This
can be measured in numbers ranging from 64 for very bright areas, all the way up to 1600 for the
extreme darkness on a regular everyday camera. Some extreme cameras can go as low as 50 and as high
as 3,000,000 The higher your ISO setting, the more sensitive your camera will be to light, this allows us
to take photos in poorly lit areas or even at night without a flash. You will be able to get higher quality
photos with a low ISO setting but do not compromise a photo just because of this guideline.
Unnecessarily raising your ISO will result in more noise and grain in your photo. Lowering your ISO in low
light areas will dramatically darken your photos, sometimes to the point of unfixable.

The photo above is a good example of showing the same picture with different ISO settings. We
can see that in this photographer’s low-light environment is not suitable for anything less than ISO 1600.
In the below photo raising the ISO too much develops into a grainy mess, becoming visible at roughly
ISO 6400.