Tip #2 ISO & Noise

ISO stands for International Organization for Standardization. For our purposes, it simply means how much light the camera's sensor will capture. A higher ISO will capture more light and produce a brighter image. A lower ISO will capture less light and produce darker images. You'll want to make  sure that you set your camera to the least possible ISO necessary when taking a photo because a higher ISO will result in more "noise" in the image. "Noise" is tiny little specs that can appear in your image when the sensitivity of the sensor is too high.

The ISO settings on most digital cameras range from 100 ISO to 3200 ISO and higher. On a bright sunny day, you can set your camera's ISO to around 100 since so much light is available. Inside, or when it is dark outside/or shade, you can set your camera's ISO to around 800 to 1600. If your image is still underexposed, then you can try using a flash or changing your shutter speed and aperture. 


Here is an example shot outside in the shade. You can see the difference when you change your ISO.

ISO was 100

ISO 400