The Beauty of Auto ISO with the Canon 5D Mk3

November 21, 2014 • Leave a Comment

I was always a skeptic of auto ISO and never ever used it until recently. I was convinced that the camera was never going to be able to pick the right ISO without me setting it manually. Well I was wrong. These computers with lenses attached are really amazing and have changed how we use cameras forever. My thoughts on the matter come from being an old film guy and it was up to me to correctly set the camera ASA so the meter would give the correct exposure. The Canon 5D Mk3 will pretty much shoot in the dark which means I don't have to fiddle with the ISO to keep the grain under control. It's pretty amazing well past ISO 4000. So today while I was on an assignment I decided to use the camera on manual exposure and auto ISO. The ISO's the camera used were anywhere from 6400 to 2000 and as you will see the results are great. I like to shoot at between 1/200s and 1/160s to stop most medium movement while using the 24-70, so for static inside photojournalistic shots 1/160s @ f 2.8 works great. The amazing thing that the 5D Mk3 does is give you really great AWB as well. This really sets you up for concentrating on the moment and not worrying about anything but shooting. If you use program mode the camera will pick the wrong shutter speed at the worst time so I like to set everything manually except for ISO and WB. Here are some images from the shoot. I have converted them to B&W because I like the way they look for this type of subject. The first shot is a color image of the first image to show how good the AWB is. These shots were made with two bare lightbulbs at the very most in a very dark basement. Normally I would have shot with a Speedlight with a dome on it. It was in my pocket but I never pulled it out. I wanted to give the images the feel of working in the basement of a church rectory filling up Thanksgiving boxes and this did the trick.

Canon 5D Mk3 w/Canon 24-70 L