Have you unlocked the full potential of your high end camera? If you are not actively using ISO as an integral tool, I would suggest you are leaving money on the table. Here’s why

There are three settings that are critical to crisp, clear, and impactful surf images. First, and most obvious, is shutter speed. Anything under 1/800 will be insufficient to freeze every drop of water shooting off the back fin of the surfer. The image above was shot at 1/2000 of a second. Zoom in on the spray and you will see little or no blur.

The second setting is your depth of field – or aperture. I find the sweet spot on my camera to be f/8. Objects in the distance will be blurred while the focal point will be crisp. Above, you may notice the background blue water at the top of the frame is nicely blurred, but the surfer is super crisp.

But here’s the rub. The higher the shutter speed and the greater the depth of field, the more light you need to prevent your image from being underexposed. And this is where ISO comes in. ISO is light sensitivity. The higher the ISO, the greater sensitivity to light your camera will allow. This means you can shoot in low light at high speeds.

But wait you might say. Doesn’t high ISO mean more noise/pixelation? Yes it does. That is why we try to shoot with the lowest ISO possible for normal photography. But when it comes to capturing high speed action, something has to give. If I shot these pictures at ISO100 they would be super dark. Then in Lightroom, everywhere that I have to increase exposure and shadow will result in pixelation and lack of detail that greatly exceeds that found in a high ISO image. So the rule of thumb is properly expose your images, even if it means using high ISO!

On this day, I set my ISO to automatic as the clouds were intermittently blocking the sun and casting shadows. Some of these images resulted from and ISO as high as 800!!! However, as you can see, they are super crisp and there is no appreciable noise at all. Lightroom “Enhance” does a great job clearing out unwanted noise. Knowing this, I will never compromise my shutter speed for the “need” for a low ISO and neither should you!

Happy shooting!