Sony RX1 - Using Auto ISO

Muizen

Regular
Location
Mechelen, Belgium
Name
Harry Briels
I am undoubtedly kind of old fashioned, so I can't help it that I have some problems with using "Auto ISO" on the RX1.
On my Leica M9 most of the time, I had the ISO at 200 and only occasionally I would use a higher ISO.
Now in the world of my RX1 I can let my camera decide what ISO is good for taking my images.
I have problems feeling comfortable with my camera making ISO decisions.
But one should not and can not stop progress

I would like to know under what pre-conditions it would be good "shooting practice" to use Auto ISO.
For the time being my ISO is still on 100 ISO!

Thanks for your thoughts!
Harry
 
I use auto ISO pretty much all the time. The only thing I tend to change is the maximum ISO. For most day to day shooting, I set the max at 6400. It's not gonna go that high unless it needs to and if it needs to, the quality is incredible. For lower light shooting where I'm anticipating using a grainy B&W approach I'll set it all the way up at 25,600. I don't think I've ever seen it go above 12,800 on its own, but 25,600 is actually pretty useable for B&W. sometimes I shoot in aperture priority, often in manual mode, but almost always with auto ISO. The only time I think I'd set ISO manually is if I was going to do a long exposure from a tripod in very low light, where the camera would tend to pick a high ISO but I'd want to keep it low.

-Ray
 
I use auto ISO pretty much all the time. The only thing I tend to change is the maximum ISO. For most day to day shooting, I set the max at 6400. It's not gonna go that high unless it needs to and if it needs to, the quality is incredible. For lower light shooting where I'm anticipating using a grainy B&W approach I'll set it all the way up at 25,600. I don't think I've ever seen it go above 12,800 on its own, but 25,600 is actually pretty useable for B&W. sometimes I shoot in aperture priority, often in manual mode, but almost always with auto ISO. The only time I think I'd set ISO manually is if I was going to do a long exposure from a tripod in very low light, where the camera would tend to pick a high ISO but I'd want to keep it low.

Same here. I prefer M mode with shutter and aperture set by me and Auto-ISO to let the camera take care of metering. This works successfully me on the RX1 and my Nikon gear particularly because:

1) the multi-metering mode is extremely good and I can trust it to do a great job at picking a sensible exposure of everything I've thrown at it.
2) The exposure compensation dial works to adjust the ISO for fine tuning.
3) high ISO on the RX1 is fantastic and I have mine set to max out at 12,800 (IMO shots above 6400 might need a bit of extra PP but are still usable)

I dislike manually setting the ISO by comparison... it makes me feel much slower to respond to changing conditions and I find it markedly more convenient only worrying about DoF and motion elements of exposure. Since I can adjust exposure compensation on the fly anyway, there's hardly any downside as I see it.
 
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