Cooking in a Dark Kitchen: A Tale of ISO

*Disclaimer - All ISO information in this post has now been debunked by myself. Enjoy the musings of a person who did not understand the manual setting yet. And still only gets it a little bit.

I thought I'd share what we've been eating the past week, and use my photography woes to learn a little bit about ISO.  These recipes (if you can even call them that) are neither fancy, nor impressive, but, if you're looking for a quick weeknight meal with zero preparation- this is it.

We love Costco. M loves chicken fingers. I was skeptical at first, now I'm a believer. It is real chicken. I promise.



We eat them 2 ways:



-Photography Freeze-

This photo was taken in terrible light, at night, in our kitchen.  I've obviously done some editing, but this is an example of when upping your ISO is very useful.  ISO is your film speed, the measure of your camera's sensitivity to light. I know that is probably an over simplified definition, but I personally would rather really understand the least common denominator rather than sort of understand the high level stuff. The ISO in the above photo is 1250, which is high. Not super high, but high. The regular intervals are 200 (the lowest- least sensitive to light), 400, 800 and 1600 (I know some cameras go outside those ranges, but that's the norm).  An ISO of 1250 gave my camera enough sensitivity to light to get a passable photo in my dark kitchen without being grainy (aka "noise").

Now to the chicken at hand...

Chicken Parmesan Sandwiches

1. Bake chicken according to package directions.

2. After chicken is cooked top with Ragu (straight out of the pantry or fridge), then top with any kind of Italian cheese, shredded or sliced.

3. Lightly butter sesame seed buns (or spray with Pam) and place on the baking sheet with the chicken (butter side up).

4. Put it all back in the oven until the cheese is melted and the buns are toasty.



ISO here is 560, in manual.  Also, dark kitchen, not a great shot. See how the baking sheet and edges are darker than in the other photo where the ISO was higher?  The ISO is also tied to your exposure composition.  If your exposure is really low, you might try a higher ISO, balance them out according to your light source.  The exposure on the last two shots was -0.33.  Probably should have tried exposing the photo more with a lower ISO, maybe it would have worked, maybe not.  For me it's trial and error, sometimes I have the time to mess with it, sometimes I just edit to oblivion.

All you folks that actually know what you're doing- I'd love your comments and advice!

Back to the chicken. Easy, right? And no effort.

Great if you've been working all day, or chasing after a Roosta.



The above photo is a perfect example of having the ISO on your camera too high for the light available.  I had it set at 1600 ISO and -0.33 exposure on aperture priority mode (which I am liking less and less, no surprise that I want to have control over more aspects of the photo).  1600 is waaay too high of an ISO, especially considering all the great light I've got coming from the window.  400-600 would have been fine.  But, if J is doing something cute I usually snap before I check the settings. Such is life.

Bottom line, when the ISO is too high the picture gets "grainy". See the sides of his face? Grainy.  Makes me think of the pictures you always see of an award banquet taken with a disposable camera.

Moving on to easy recipe #2.



On this photo the ISO is also set to 1600, however, the camera needed all that extra light, so it's not grainy.  But, the lighting is bad, so the color is not great.  Product of M and I eating dinner after dark and me hating the flash.  I probably should have played around more with the exposure settings and metering. But, I was hungry. And I know nothing about metering. Gotta do a post on that so I can learn about it.

Chicken Caesar Salads

1. Bake chicken according to directions.

2. Prepare/wash romaine lettuce

3. Make your salad: Lettuce, parmesan cheese, THEN dressing, then chicken and the rest of your toppings. If you put the toppings on before your dressing then slip all over the place.

4. We top with croutons, sunflower seeds, craisins, sliced almonds (me) and black pepper. Or, just Parmesan, dressing and chicken. It's your canvas.



Also 1600 ISO. Same story, it's dark, so the color and photo suffers. However, a high ISO makes it so you can at least capitalize on the little bit of light available.  Other things that will help? Wide open aperture to let in as much light as possible, and a slow shutter. Although, too slow and the photo will be blurry unless you have a tripod.

I've noticed that having the ISO higher than 1000 (with decent light) is when the film grain really starts to show up. Here is a cloudy day in September, with the ISO set to 1000...



See how much crisper that is than this one, taken at 1600 ISO?



Go the other way and the photo will suffer too. Cloudy day, 400 ISO, -0.67 exposure. I might as well have put my hand over the lens to keep out all natural light.



Ah, sweet editing (notice the thirds). Much better. Not a framer, but better.



I would once again like to reiterate that I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm just playing, experimenting and learning.  My philosophy is to keep practicing like crazy and hope that my eye for composition will improve.  I'd love for you to muddle through it with me, learn from my many mistakes and maybe we'll end up helping each other in the process.

Have a great Thursday!