Auto ISO

[StevenVW]

How many of you shoot with autoISO on? I tend to keep as much control options off the auto setting and wonder if it's a bad thing to shoot with ISO on auto ...

[darknj]

I usually always leave the camera in the bag in Auto ISO limiting it to 3200, same goes for Aperture and have the speed on the new T mode on the X-T1, around 1/180 just in case I would need to grab the camera to capture something quickly.

 

But when I have enough light I tend to swap it to ISO 400 and adjust as needed.

 

I have no issue on leaving the camera deciding things for me, if it gets me the shot, that's matters to me the most.

[Aswald]

When I was starting out, I had a "pro" photographer telling fellow togs that I must be a novice because I was using aperture priority and not full manual.

 

If you can capture great pictures, whether it's auto ISO on or off, it's really ok.

 

I have auto iso on if the lighting is very dynamic, like outdoors. Especially when the sun is playing hide and seek behind clouds.

 

For interior shots using flash, I usually turn it off. That is so that I can balance the background according to the kind of shot I am looking for.

[Dis]

I use auto ISO when I shoot some casual things and I'm not after maximum result. Otherwise I fix the ISO so I wouldn't need to check it all the time and could concentrate on what I am shooting.

[mart46]

I keep the Auto on, limited to 1600 max, unless I'm shooting landscapes, then its set to 200

[hrk]

I always leave auto ISO on set to 6400 max (I would rather take grainy and sharp than lower ISO and blurred), unless I have flash on of course.

Auto ISO is even more useful now that the exposure compensation can be used since FW4

[aceflibble]

X100S and X-T10 have it left on by default for quick shooting, with the shutter speed set to 1/125th and 1/250th, respectively, and the max ISO set to 3200.
For 'proper' shooting I always set the ISO manually, and my X-T1 never goes into auto ISO.

 

Though really I'm doing it more out of habit than anything. Auto ISO was never an option on any of my cameras until a couple of years ago, or when it was an option it was so poorly-implemented that it wasn't worth thinking about. I'm too used to setting everything manually to remember that auto ISO and exposure compensation even exist. I am starting to shift into auto ISO more often though, especially since picking up the X-T10, and I bet by this time next year I'll be using it at least 50% of the time.

[MrJones]

How many of you shoot with autoISO on? I tend to keep as much control options off the auto setting and wonder if it's a bad thing to shoot with ISO on auto ...

Most of the time I use AutoISO 6400 with minimum SS 1/80 or 1/125 and change the min SS as needed for a given situation.   If you shoot in Aperture mode and set your minimum shutter speed in AutoISO to the correct min SS for the type of shooting you're doing then the camera almost can't get it wrong especially when you add EC into the mix.   And if the camera does get it wrong it will be because of your choice of settings and possibly your lens choice not because AutoISO didn't work.   I also sometimes shoot in Manual mode and sometimes turn off AutoISO if I know what ISO I want to use and don't plan to change it.

[jeremyclarke]

Like several others I found auto-ISO on other cameras (Canon, early Fuji firmware) essentially useless and slogged through the process of constantly managing ISO which I hated. 

 

Philosophically I believe ISO should be an automatic setting in most situations. With shutter and aperture there are creative reasons to choose specific values, and we should always be conscious of how they are set (slow shutter for movement, wide aperture for blur etc.) With ISO on the other hand there's no creative reason to set it one way or another, you basically always want it as low as possible. The only real decision is when the ISO is higher than you'd like and you have to choose whether to live with it or change the subject/lighting/circumstances/timing in order to be able to use a lower ISO. IMHO you can still make that decision with auto-ISO enabled by watching what value gets chosen.

 

On the X-E1 late firmware I found auto-ISO really useful because of the new option to set a target shutter speed. In dark situations  (common for me, I like to shoot parties/events) it was really helpful because I could leave the camera in "full auto" (or AV/TV) and it would get whatever shot was possible for me without having to think about it (and if I wanted to think about it I just had to look at the pre-shot display of selected settings to decide if the SS was too slow). 

 

Personally I usually leave it on max ISO 6400 because I don't find the quality is that much worse than 3200 and in my experience once you're up in high-ISO terrority it's much more valuable to get the correct exposure in camera than to have a lower ISO because the RAW files don't have nearly as much DR to correct exposure later. 

 

On the X-T10 (or X-T1 FW4) auto-ISO is a no-brainer to me. The ability to control shutter, aperture or both and still have EC work makes a huge difference and I use it almost all the time. Having three preset slots for auto-ISO is really helpful on the X-T10, as is the new design of the ISO chooser which makes it WAY easier to quickly find the right preset compared to how it worked on the X-E1. 

 

Times I don't use auto-ISO: Night photography where I basically need to trick the camera into making strange decisions and have tons of time. Studio flash situations where I have everything planned out and know I'll get consistent exposures. 

 

For run-and-gun flash work (full manual, I don't have a TTL flash) I actually find that auto mode on the camera can work surprisingly well. I set shutter to 180x, aperture creatively (usually f/1.4  ) then use exposure compensation to darken the exposure until the flash and ambient light are balanced. Obviously this system requires me to constantly monitor how things look, but it ensures I'm never completely blowing out the ambient light (which I find usually makes ugly pics) and it's fast and easy to use EC+manual controls on my flash.