Disinformation

bobn2 said:

mamallama said:

bobn2 said:

mamallama said:

bobn2 said:

mamallama said:

bobn2 said:

mamallama said:

bobn2 said:

D Cox said:

bobn2 said:

D Cox said:

Can you write a correct explanation of ISO in the same number of words (or fewer) ?

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How about "ISO controls how light or dark an image is for a given exposure".

Then you can go on to say "If you set a high ISO you can get good tonality with a small exposure, which you're likely to have to choose if you're working in low light and want to avoid camera shake".

Then if you really wanted to explain it further you could say. "Whilst a high ISO allows you to achieve good tonality, it doesn't help with the other penalty of using a small exposure, which is a noisy image".

Not too hard, is it? I suppose it does mean you have to explain what 'exposure' means first.

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My understanding is that raising the ISO number does reduce noise in some cameras, either by increasing the analogue amplification (which would affect all images), or by increasing software noise reduction (which would affect only JPGs).

It might be better to say : "The resulting images will be noisy on some cameras."

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Given that shot noise is the major noise source, the result of reducing exposure will be noisier on all cameras. Raising the ISO will mitigate the shadow noise on some cameras, compared with reducing the exposure and leaving the ISO the same, but it will never result in less noise than the larger exposure. I think my formulation is about right for the beginner, further in the information process, one can talk about how to characterise the ISO control of your camera to get the best results, but that's not really at beginner level, and unlike the beginner stories the Trianglists would like to tell, everything I said is true.

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Can you say that again without run on sentences?

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Given that shot noise is the major noise source, the result of reducing exposure will be noisier on all cameras◉ Raising the ISO will mitigate the shadow noise on some cameras, compared with reducing the exposure and leaving the ISO the same, but it will never result in less noise than the larger exposure◉ I think my formulation is about right for the beginner, further in the information process, one can talk about how to characterise the ISO control of your camera to get the best results, but that's not really at beginner level, and unlike the beginner stories the Trianglists would like to tell, everything I said is true.

Periods emphasised, since you seem to be having difficulty reading them.

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The last sentence needs work. Maybe you can diagram it for your students.

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Yeah, sure, it's not the most elegant sentence ever. And???

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That is one long run on sentence. A good teacher avoids run on sentences. Oh, well...

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Sure. And sometimes my sentences aren't so well constructed. No-one's perfect. Thanks for your feedback.

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To be honest, sentence construction is not the only problem with many of them.

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To be honest, you're wrong. The content is pretty good.

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FingerPainter said:

mamallama said:

Hey, teacher, think about it, measure is not the appropriate word either.

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Nothing there to help OP. Something there to attack bobn2. A more helpful approach would have been to suggest a better word than "measure".

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1. 1.ascertain the size, amount, or degree of (something) by using an instrument or device marked in standard units.

mamallama said:

bobn2 said:

mamallama said:

bobn2 said:

mamallama said:

bobn2 said:

mamallama said:

bobn2 said:

mamallama said:

bobn2 said:

D Cox said:

bobn2 said:

D Cox said:

Can you write a correct explanation of ISO in the same number of words (or fewer) ?

Click to expand...

How about "ISO controls how light or dark an image is for a given exposure".

Then you can go on to say "If you set a high ISO you can get good tonality with a small exposure, which you're likely to have to choose if you're working in low light and want to avoid camera shake".

Then if you really wanted to explain it further you could say. "Whilst a high ISO allows you to achieve good tonality, it doesn't help with the other penalty of using a small exposure, which is a noisy image".

Not too hard, is it? I suppose it does mean you have to explain what 'exposure' means first.

Click to expand...

My understanding is that raising the ISO number does reduce noise in some cameras, either by increasing the analogue amplification (which would affect all images), or by increasing software noise reduction (which would affect only JPGs).

It might be better to say : "The resulting images will be noisy on some cameras."

Click to expand...

Given that shot noise is the major noise source, the result of reducing exposure will be noisier on all cameras. Raising the ISO will mitigate the shadow noise on some cameras, compared with reducing the exposure and leaving the ISO the same, but it will never result in less noise than the larger exposure. I think my formulation is about right for the beginner, further in the information process, one can talk about how to characterise the ISO control of your camera to get the best results, but that's not really at beginner level, and unlike the beginner stories the Trianglists would like to tell, everything I said is true.

Click to expand...

Can you say that again without run on sentences?

Click to expand...

Given that shot noise is the major noise source, the result of reducing exposure will be noisier on all cameras◉ Raising the ISO will mitigate the shadow noise on some cameras, compared with reducing the exposure and leaving the ISO the same, but it will never result in less noise than the larger exposure◉ I think my formulation is about right for the beginner, further in the information process, one can talk about how to characterise the ISO control of your camera to get the best results, but that's not really at beginner level, and unlike the beginner stories the Trianglists would like to tell, everything I said is true.

Periods emphasised, since you seem to be having difficulty reading them.

Click to expand...

The last sentence needs work. Maybe you can diagram it for your students.

Click to expand...

Yeah, sure, it's not the most elegant sentence ever. And???

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That is one long run on sentence. A good teacher avoids run on sentences. Oh, well...

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Sure. And sometimes my sentences aren't so well constructed. No-one's perfect. Thanks for your feedback.

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To be honest, sentence construction is not the only problem with many of them.

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To be honest, you're wrong. The content is pretty good.

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I've already pointed out the gibberish.

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bobn2 said:

FingerPainter said:

mamallama said:

Hey, teacher, think about it, measure is not the appropriate word either.

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Nothing there to help OP. Something there to attack bobn2. A more helpful approach would have been to suggest a better word than "measure".

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In any case, 'measure' was a carefully chosen and good word to use in that context.

measure

verb

1. 1.ascertain the size, amount, or degree of (something) by using an instrument or device marked in standard units.

So, the problem here is only that the sensor doesn't work in 'standard units', but apart from that the word would imply to the reader exactly what was intended. If there is a better word that conveys accurate estimation of some physical quantity a suggestion would be very welcome.

Still, I always welcome constructive criticism. It's just that I suspect that mamallama's intentions are not constructive.

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ThrillaMozilla said:

Verkku said:

Shucito said:

Hi Bob. I'll say one more thing before I go to sleep. When I took ISO out of the exposure equation, that day I finally began to understand how to use light instead of letting the camera decide for me. Have fun and keep taking pictures.

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i have the very same experience after trying whar bob2 ja iliah wrote. I’m just wondering why there is so great resistance against learning how cameras really work.

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Yes, the problem is that the so-called "simple" (but incorrect) approach leads to false conclusions about how to solve photographic problems. For example, under some conditions you would want to raise the ISO setting instead of decreasing it to reduce noise.

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ThrillaMozilla said:

Some people have gotten that backwards even in this thread, and I believe there are other errors as well.

Most of the time it's good enough to think that the earth is flat and the sun and stars rotate around the earth. But sooner or later that leads to some dreadfully incorrect conclusions.

It's not difficult to understand, and Bob2 and others have been diligent about informing people. It's not easy, however, when some people are shouting that knowledge is elitist, and everyone knows the earth is flat and the stars go around the earth.

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bobn2 said:

riveredger said:

bobn2 said:

threw the lens said:

bobn2 said:

bclaff said:

threw the lens said:

Don't worry about it. As long as beginners understand the camera is more sensitive to light at higher iso but the image looks more grainy it's fine.

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Except that the camera is not more sensitive to light it simply produces a normal lightness of final image with less light; eg. higher ISO lightens the image.

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Agreed. And the important point about the discussion is what beginners learning using that material go away thinking. And in my experience, they very often go away thinking that somehow more light gets created, somewhere, due to the extra 'sensitivity'. Mind you, I'm not sure 'sensitivity' is a concept that many beginners have much of a grasp of (nor for that matter, quite a few experienced people).

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The stuff you two talk is why neither of you are good teachers.

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The stuff we two talk about the concepts which need teaching is not phrased in the way we'd put it if we were teaching. And you have no idea whether or not either of us is a 'good teacher'.

bobn2 said:

You'd like to truss up beginners in fussy language and verbal qualifications which wouldn't be memorable and to the point enough for a beginner.

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Not at all. That kind of fussy language and verbal qualification only comes during the back conversation, when there are a lot of people insisting that teachers should be lying to beginners. Generally, it turns out that this is because they were badly taught in the first place, and don't want to admit to it. So, what you end up with is a back discussion about what terms really mean, which them the resisters like you say is 'fussy language and verbal qualifications'.

A small example. One can choose to call how light or dark the final picture is 'lightness' or 'exposure'. The former is correct, the latter is wrong. Calling it 'lightness' sounds fussy to people who have been wrongly taught that it should be 'exposure', because they have lodged in their heads that 'exposure' is the word and haven't come across 'lightness' before. For a beginner, there is no such bias. A beginner hasn't come across either word before. They are both equally jargonised, so why not introduce a beginner to the right word? In fact, I'd think that the word 'lightness' is much more intuitively to do with how light or dark something is than is 'exposure', which as a word unexplained has nothing whatever to do with it at all.

bobn2 said:

It's very easy for a normal person to understand that if a camera is made more sensitive to light it can use a shorter shutter speed to stop action.

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But it is untrue (and, as I said before, depends on a wrong definition of 'sensitivity' in any case). And if you believe it, your learning of photography will never proceed past the absolute basics (which you've got wrong anyway) because every more advanced concept is inexplicable given the misconceptions that your head is loaded with. Simple as that. Given also that you clearly don't know what 'sensitive' means, and nor would a beginner. One of the interesting things in this continuing discussion is that the miseducated for some reason think that beginners would share their miseducation. They wouldn't, unless they've been unfortunate enough to come across sites such as the one mentioned in the OP.

bobn2 said:

It is easy to visualise the exposure triangle and it works.

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No, it doesn't 'work'. Even on a basic level. All the information conveys is that there are three controls. It doesn't correctly explain the relationship between those controls, it doesn't correctly explain the consequences of using each of those controls in isolation from the others. It omits the role of light altogether.

bobn2 said:

A lot of camera cognoscenti think they are superior to the 'exposure triangle' way of learning. Which is a shame, because it has worked for absolutely millions of photographers.

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I very much doubt it. You're making up an estimate and you have no evidence to suggest it's correct. The triangle is recent, people who learned their photography before the millennium didn't learn it using the triangle (even if they misremember that they did). Many photographers don't bother to learn even that there are three controls (which is all the 'triangle tells them) because for them, three is too many anyway. What else are scene modes for? So, the number of photographers misled by this poorly conceived graphic is thankfully likely far fewer than 'absolutely millions'.

bobn2 said:

I think the problem lies more within the egos of those that want to show they know better, than being concerned with beginners getting bad photos.

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I think the problem lies mainly in the egos of those that have been badly taught, or worse, badly self-taught and are unwilling to admit to it, so much so that they insist that beginners must be as badly taught as they were. I'm not sure why people are so eager to hang on to their misconceptions, but they are.

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You still don't get it after we have told you time and time again.

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You and your fellow thinkers repeating garbage time and time again in no reason for me to 'get' garbage.

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riveredger said:

bobn2 said:

riveredger said:

bobn2 said:

threw the lens said:

bobn2 said:

bclaff said:

threw the lens said:

Don't worry about it. As long as beginners understand the camera is more sensitive to light at higher iso but the image looks more grainy it's fine.

Click to expand...

Except that the camera is not more sensitive to light it simply produces a normal lightness of final image with less light; eg. higher ISO lightens the image.

Click to expand...

Agreed. And the important point about the discussion is what beginners learning using that material go away thinking. And in my experience, they very often go away thinking that somehow more light gets created, somewhere, due to the extra 'sensitivity'. Mind you, I'm not sure 'sensitivity' is a concept that many beginners have much of a grasp of (nor for that matter, quite a few experienced people).

Click to expand...

The stuff you two talk is why neither of you are good teachers.

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The stuff we two talk about the concepts which need teaching is not phrased in the way we'd put it if we were teaching. And you have no idea whether or not either of us is a 'good teacher'.

riveredger said:

You'd like to truss up beginners in fussy language and verbal qualifications which wouldn't be memorable and to the point enough for a beginner.

Click to expand...

Not at all. That kind of fussy language and verbal qualification only comes during the back conversation, when there are a lot of people insisting that teachers should be lying to beginners. Generally, it turns out that this is because they were badly taught in the first place, and don't want to admit to it. So, what you end up with is a back discussion about what terms really mean, which them the resisters like you say is 'fussy language and verbal qualifications'.

A small example. One can choose to call how light or dark the final picture is 'lightness' or 'exposure'. The former is correct, the latter is wrong. Calling it 'lightness' sounds fussy to people who have been wrongly taught that it should be 'exposure', because they have lodged in their heads that 'exposure' is the word and haven't come across 'lightness' before. For a beginner, there is no such bias. A beginner hasn't come across either word before. They are both equally jargonised, so why not introduce a beginner to the right word? In fact, I'd think that the word 'lightness' is much more intuitively to do with how light or dark something is than is 'exposure', which as a word unexplained has nothing whatever to do with it at all.

riveredger said:

It's very easy for a normal person to understand that if a camera is made more sensitive to light it can use a shorter shutter speed to stop action.

Click to expand...

But it is untrue (and, as I said before, depends on a wrong definition of 'sensitivity' in any case). And if you believe it, your learning of photography will never proceed past the absolute basics (which you've got wrong anyway) because every more advanced concept is inexplicable given the misconceptions that your head is loaded with. Simple as that. Given also that you clearly don't know what 'sensitive' means, and nor would a beginner. One of the interesting things in this continuing discussion is that the miseducated for some reason think that beginners would share their miseducation. They wouldn't, unless they've been unfortunate enough to come across sites such as the one mentioned in the OP.

riveredger said:

It is easy to visualise the exposure triangle and it works.

Click to expand...

No, it doesn't 'work'. Even on a basic level. All the information conveys is that there are three controls. It doesn't correctly explain the relationship between those controls, it doesn't correctly explain the consequences of using each of those controls in isolation from the others. It omits the role of light altogether.

riveredger said:

A lot of camera cognoscenti think they are superior to the 'exposure triangle' way of learning. Which is a shame, because it has worked for absolutely millions of photographers.

Click to expand...

I very much doubt it. You're making up an estimate and you have no evidence to suggest it's correct. The triangle is recent, people who learned their photography before the millennium didn't learn it using the triangle (even if they misremember that they did). Many photographers don't bother to learn even that there are three controls (which is all the 'triangle tells them) because for them, three is too many anyway. What else are scene modes for? So, the number of photographers misled by this poorly conceived graphic is thankfully likely far fewer than 'absolutely millions'.

riveredger said:

I think the problem lies more within the egos of those that want to show they know better, than being concerned with beginners getting bad photos.

Click to expand...

I think the problem lies mainly in the egos of those that have been badly taught, or worse, badly self-taught and are unwilling to admit to it, so much so that they insist that beginners must be as badly taught as they were. I'm not sure why people are so eager to hang on to their misconceptions, but they are.

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You still don't get it after we have told you time and time again.

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You and your fellow thinkers repeating garbage time and time again in no reason for me to 'get' garbage.

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You are proving my point.

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Shucito said:

By changing aperture/exposure time (not ISO) we can control the amount of light hitting the sensor..

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bclaff said:

threw the lens said:

bobn2 said:

bclaff said:

threw the lens said:

Don't worry about it. As long as beginners understand the camera is more sensitive to light at higher iso but the image looks more grainy it's fine.

Click to expand...

Except that the camera is not more sensitive to light it simply produces a normal lightness of final image with less light; eg. higher ISO lightens the image.

Click to expand...

Agreed. And the important point about the discussion is what beginners learning using that material go away thinking. And in my experience, they very often go away thinking that somehow more light gets created, somewhere, due to the extra 'sensitivity'. Mind you, I'm not sure 'sensitivity' is a concept that many beginners have much of a grasp of (nor for that matter, quite a few experienced people).

Click to expand...

The stuff you two talk is why neither of you are good teachers. You'd like to truss up beginners in fussy language and verbal qualifications which wouldn't be memorable and to the point enough for a beginner. It's very easy for a normal person to understand that if a camera is made more sensitive to light it can use a shorter shutter speed to stop action.

It is easy to visualise the exposure triangle.

A lot of camera cognoscenti think they are superior to the 'exposure triangle' way of learning. Which is a shame, because it has been used absolutely millions of photographers. I think the problem lies more within the egos of those that want to show they know better, than being concerned with beginners getting bad photos.

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Bob and I (I think I can speak for Bob here) are most concerned with teaching "beginners" something that is wrong for the sake of simplicity. This wrong information can lead to additional wrong conclusions and will have to be unlearned as that beginner advances their photographic knowledge.

We also take that proper terminology is essential to good communication.
To us using the correct terms are important not simply semantics.

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bobn2 said:

JDC1958 said:

bobn2 said:

JDC1958 said:

DeathArrow said:

That's incorrect. The noise isn't related to the ISO setting.

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I am way to intelligent for your word bickering.

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Are you sure?

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Since you got 8 likes for your one liner smart ass comment here and I got 7 for my intelligent one, I would say like all things here the bickering is split almost down the middle.

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Your comment was crying out for a smart ass response, which is probably why mine got as many likes as it did. Generally it'n not a great idea to declare your intelligence in a post containing a major grammatical error. I know that we all make grammatical errors, and it was probably just the spell checker, but putting one in a line saying how intelligent you are just isn't, shall we say, smart, that is, if you're thin skinned enough to be upset by the inevitable smart ass comment. You're not related to the very stable genius in the White House, by any chance?

bobn2 said:

Am I sure? Yes.

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Maybe you need to read the research of Dunning and Kruger. The people most likely to believe themselves to have high intelligence are people with below-average intelligence. Generally because they haven't actually mastered the art of thinking, so they misidentify what are the symptoms of intelligence.

bobn2 said:

Is the public opinion poll here sure? Not so much.

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There is no public opinion poll here.

bobn2 said:

My intelligent one that started this mini round table:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/63014626

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That was a pretty poor post, in my opinion. Not one befitting a person with intelligence, who might have thought slightly more deeply about why giving false information to people starting their education in any subject is not a good idea.

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AussiePhil said:

Pixel Pooper said:

That website is full of bad information. Have a look at this article on ISO, and for a laugh read the comment section below:

digital-photography-school.com/understand-iso-digital-camera/

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Michael Guest • 2 years ago

Nothing confused and inaccurate were published here. Just simple explanation of ISO for beginners. This is not MIT faculty of theoretical physic.

and that's the issue really..... the dpr elitists demand every single article be aligned with their view of technical accuracy, rather than take it on as a idiots guide that is trying to simplify the story.

Next we will have the anti exposure triangle prophets arrive in force to tell us all that ISO is an invented fallacy.

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mamallama said:

bobn2 said:

FingerPainter said:

mamallama said:

Hey, teacher, think about it, measure is not the appropriate word either.

Click to expand...

Nothing there to help OP. Something there to attack bobn2. A more helpful approach would have been to suggest a better word than "measure".

Click to expand...

In any case, 'measure' was a carefully chosen and good word to use in that context.

measure

verb

1. 1.ascertain the size, amount, or degree of (something) by using an instrument or device marked in standard units.

So, the problem here is only that the sensor doesn't work in 'standard units', but apart from that the word would imply to the reader exactly what was intended. If there is a better word that conveys accurate estimation of some physical quantity a suggestion would be very welcome.

Still, I always welcome constructive criticism. It's just that I suspect that mamallama's intentions are not constructive.

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A microphone is a transducer that convert sound waves into an electrical signal. There is nothing in a microphone to measure anything.

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mamallama said:

You still continue to write gibberish.

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Beachcomber Joe said:

Jonsi said:

I tried to tell them.

They'd rather argue.

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I look at the upside. While they are arguing there are less photos of cats, brick walls and test charts being made.

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Pixel Pooper said:

Jonsi said:

Beachcomber Joe said:

Shucito said:

By changing aperture/exposure time (not ISO) we can control the amount of light hitting the sensor..

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Under your newest reincarnation you picked a particularly poor quote to start another needless and pointless discussion about exposure and ISO.

Nowhere in the quote do I see the word "sensor". Recording, by definition, is to place information on a permanent storage medium. The CAMERA does that when it writes to the memory card. The brightness of that recorded image, the representation of the amount of light present in the scene, is determined by several factors, one of which is ISO.

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I tried to tell them.

They'd rather argue.

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The problematic part of the sentence is "more light", not what comes after it.

The ISO setting has no effect on the light. More light doesn't hit the sensor, you don't record more light, you don't capture more light, nothing.

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FingerPainter said:

Beachcomber Joe said:

Shucito said:

By changing aperture/exposure time (not ISO) we can control the amount of light hitting the sensor..

Click to expand...

...

Nowhere in the quote do I see the word "sensor". Recording, by definition, is to place information on a permanent storage medium. The CAMERA does that when it writes to the memory card.

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I'll buy that.

FingerPainter said:

The brightness of that recorded image,

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Yes,

FingerPainter said:

the representation of the amount of light present in the scene,

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No. The lightness of the recorded image is not "the" representation of the amount of light present in the scene.

If I take two photos of the same scene in the same light, with identical shutter and aperture settings but different ISOs, the two image still have different lightnesses. Which one is "the" representation of the amount of light present in the scene?

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FingerPainter said:

There was only one amount of light in the scene. At most one of the images can be an accurate representation of the amount of light in the scene. There is nothing guaranteeing either is accurate.

Cameras do not record an amount of light They record a lightness.

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FingerPainter said:

FingerPainter said:

is determined by several factors, one of which is ISO.

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The lightness of the image is indeed affected by the ISO. The amount of light in the scene is not (ignoring flash power issues).

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D Cox said:

D Cox said:

That was a pretty poor post, in my opinion. Not one befitting a person with intelligence, who might have thought slightly more deeply about why giving false information to people starting their education in any subject is not a good idea.

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But this is what schools have always done. It gives you something to revolt against as you grow up.

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AussiePhil said:

bobn2 said:

I very much doubt it. You're making up an estimate and you have no evidence to suggest it's correct. The triangle is recent, people who learned their photography before the millennium didn't learn it using the triangle (even if they misremember that they did). Many photographers don't bother to learn even that there are three controls (which is all the 'triangle tells them) because for them, three is too many anyway. What else are scene modes for? So, the number of photographers misled by this poorly conceived graphic is thankfully likely far fewer than 'absolutely millions'.

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Shooting film back in the 1970's you learnt that the speed of the film (ISO) inserted in the camera had an impact on the shutter speed used for any given aperture in the same lighting conditions.

We may not have learnt it as a triangle or even thought about it but when the digital camera came along and gave us the ability to set an ISO value at will we had three interconnected values that were easy to draw as a triangle.

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AussiePhil said:

the ISO setting may no longer change the gain/amplification behind the sensor but the value chosen still affects the shutter/aperture values for any given lighting condition.

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D Cox said:

FingerPainter said:

Beachcomber Joe said:

Shucito said:

By changing aperture/exposure time (not ISO) we can control the amount of light hitting the sensor..

Click to expand...

...

Nowhere in the quote do I see the word "sensor". Recording, by definition, is to place information on a permanent storage medium. The CAMERA does that when it writes to the memory card.

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I'll buy that.

D Cox said:

The brightness of that recorded image,

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Yes,

D Cox said:

the representation of the amount of light present in the scene,

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No. The lightness of the recorded image is not "the" representation of the amount of light present in the scene.

If I take two photos of the same scene in the same light, with identical shutter and aperture settings but different ISOs, the two image still have different lightnesses. Which one is "the" representation of the amount of light present in the scene?

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I think you're talking about JPG files here. I see no reason why the numbers in two raw files taken with the same exposure wouls differ.

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