Top 3 reasons to use high ISO on a DSLR

When I started photography 2 years ago with a cropped sensor DSLR, ISO was one of the terms that would make me feel nervous about my own shots. Going through various blogs, there was a general perception of higher ISO values being always bad. I made a real solid picture in my mind that anything above 100 ISO would make pictures look really ugly and noisy even when the format was RAW.

Switching slowly from landscapes to events and indoor photography after one year, the struggle to get properly exposed shots started to become fairly evident. Cultural events, music concerts and indoor sports taught me how important is the value of ISO. The need for faster shutter speed in a low light environment is one of the most common scenarios every photographer has to face at some point in his photography journey.

Increase shutter speed -> Leads to less incoming light

Wider aperture-> Allows more light

Environment lighting -> Already very less during events.

As seen above, a poorly lit environment makes it harder to do DSLR photography even when a lens with a wide aperture is available. ISO or external flash can be the only life saver here. I recently shot my first indoor dance event with a prime lens and a telephoto zoom lens. Interestingly even my 50 mm 1.8 mm struggled to get properly exposed shots because I was still in my old mindset of not bumping up the DSLR ISO. The event was in progress and I was losing shots, there is no worse feeling than this. Had to swallow my low ISO pride and changed the value to 800. Voila! The shots looked much much better from an exposure point of view. I came home and copied the photos to my laptop for post-processing followed by 2-3 hours of post-processing. Here is what I observed:

A poorly exposed low ISO shot when post-processed is inferior in quality as compared to a properly exposed high ISO shot.

High ISO DSLR photo

Use of external wireless flash units can help with properly exposed shots without bumping up the ISO, but most of the events don't allow this. Astro and star trail photography is another huge branch of photography that involves usage of higher values. For this, full frame cameras are the best as they are less prone to noise at higher ISO values. What do you think is a usable range of ISO value for a cropped sensor DSLR?

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