Digital Home Thoughts: Use a High ISO to Create Grainy Shots

"While not really a ‘rule’ of photography - it is generally accepted in most photographic tutorials that you should avoid noise in your images at all costs by choosing the lowest ISO possible for the light situation that you’re shooting in. This will leave you with shots that are as smooth, clean and sharp as possible for the lighting conditions that you’re in. While this is a recommended practice in most shooting circumstances - there are times where ramping up your ISO setting to it’s maximum can create some interesting effects. Grainy or noisy shots can give your image a gritty and raw quality that creates a completely different mood in your shots."



If you are looking for that newspaper style look in your photographs, shooting with high ISO is for you. Of course, at higher ISOs, the light sensitivity of your camera will increase drastically so you will have to reduce your aperture size and you will likely have to increase your shutter speed to reduce the amount of light getting into the camera. The only times I have needed high ISO settings is when I was trying to capture photographs in low light, especially when doing some astrophotography.