Maximize Your Camera’s Potential With Auto ISO: This Author’s Advice

^{Note: This tip was written by guest author Tobie Schalkwyk.}

^{If you’re interested in improving your bird photography skills, check out and download Photzy’s 10 Bird Photography Cheat Sheets}

I’m unsure about you, but my first photos came from a little point-and-shoot Kodak camera. You needed to know nothing about photography to use it.

Even your great-grandma could take photos! Just peep through the viewfinder, find your subject, and press the shutter release. That’s it!

Only once the film was full would you hand it in for development, and three days later, you’d know how many of them were keepers (you could bank on about 70%, but you paid for the failures, too). 

Many moons later, the big day arrived when something fantastic entered the market. It was called ‘Digital Cameras’! I bought one of Canon’s first digital cameras and used the user manual to get the most out of it.

There was limited info about it on the ‘net. Even YouTube was in its infant shoes. 

Nothing had changed from the point-and-shoot, really. You had a dial with Sport, Auto and other settings. All the settings (which you managed to understand!) appeared to be delivering the same results so you just left it on Auto. 

At least you now had a built-in flash, a mediocre built-in zoom lens, and the ability to use the largest available SD card (32Mb, if I remember correctly)!

The major advantage was that you could now check your images on an LCD screen and select the ones you’d like to print, delete, and save to your PC.

At Last! The DSLR!

Fast-forward more years (which included the sinking of the bridge camera when I slipped and fell into one of South Africa’s mountain pools), and new camera technology entered the market: DSLR!

For many years, I envied the middle—to upper-class guys who could afford one of these great technological masterpieces. Then, one day, I was able to buy one for myself.

Immediately, a new point of discussion became huge: Manual or non-manual! It took little effort and a few months of experimenting to convince me that Manual was the way to go—full Manual, including ISO!

A Case for Auto ISO

Quite a few images wasted over a few years made me regret the foolhardy decision (only manual ISO).

Every now and again, I would mess up a shot due to some frantic effort to quickly adjust ISO while photographing birds.

You see, successful manual exposure was easy to achieve when a bird was static and close enough so that the camera successfully figured out what and where my subject was.

This was not so true in other scenarios.

Where does it make the most sense to use Auto ISO?

When following a bird that is moving non-stop through or beneath a canopy of leaves, the problem is that your ‘canvas’ comprises shady and sunny patches. If you try to adjust ISO while following a bird in this case, you’re going to waste a lot of effort and miss a lot of shots.

The problem is that in one second, the bird will be in a sunny patch, then in a shady patch, then a sunny patch, then a shady patch. This is when Auto ISO becomes one of your greatest friends. Let the camera worry about the exact setting—it can measure light, make decisions, and adjust ISO accordingly much faster than you can ever dream of doing!

Some photographers set a maximum ISO figure, but I don’t even bother. I'd rather lower exposure a little in post-processing to reduce snow in a high ISO image than add snow when raising exposure in an underexposed image.

Summary

Well, there was a lot said about a small setting that may make a huge difference in your success rate when snapping moving birds in a forest area.

I hope that you will at least think about it next time when you find yourself in such scenario!

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