ISO is how sensitive the sensor is. High ISOs allow faster shutter speeds but produce more noise,grain,on the image. Ideally you should use it at the lowest value and only increase it if you are shooting hand held in poor light.
Hope this helps.
Back in the day film came in different ISo (100,200,400) and it was for the type of lighting you would be shooting in (daytime, mixed, nighttime or inside)
For my indoor flower shots I use between a 500 and 640 ISO since I do not use a flash on my photos. Outside on bright days I set it to 100 and for cloudy days it is about 200. I always turn two settings to manual on my camera and that is flash (off) and ISO to reduce the noise that could come if the camera selected something over 800.
so THIS could be why my photos seem a little grainy, i'll have to play around a little and see if this helps! i usually just leave it on auto because i didn't know
what it was
Another useful thing to keep in mind, is that given the "higher ISO = more noise" part, you can also derive "the larger you plan on printing it = the lower your ISO needs to be", because as the noise gets greater, it'll swamp the finer detail.
Try and always shoot at the lowest ISO possible (to optimise the quality).
However, if that means that you have to set a long exposure time (leading to camerashake etc), by increasing the ISO you will be able to shorten the exposure time and get a clearer, more focused (but possibly grainier) photo.
If I can't hold the camera still enough to shoot at ISO 100, I increase it to 200 and try again. If that still doesn't allow me to shorten the exposure time enough to shoot without shaking I increase it to 400 (and so forth). This is because I'm not experienced enough to know what to set it before I start! The more I get used to using my camera on manual, the more I can correctly guess the ISO setting, but that's how I started figuring it out. Now if it's a bit dark, I won't bother trying with 100, and start at 400 or something instead (and work up from there).
While in general it's true to say low ISO = better, some people also like shooting high ISO images in order to get the 'grain' / noise for artistic effect...
ISO is back from film days, where films were rated based on their sensitivity to light. Now it applies to digital sensors. However, film grain is about a billion times better looking then digital noise... so noise is usually frowned upon.
Unless shooting with controlled lighting (like a studio), I use Auto ISO. I always have mine set to the lowest possible for my camera, and have the camera start bumping it up when shutter speeds fall below 1/30 or 1/60 (depends on what I am shooting).
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Hope this helps.
For my indoor flower shots I use between a 500 and 640 ISO since I do not use a flash on my photos. Outside on bright days I set it to 100 and for cloudy days it is about 200. I always turn two settings to manual on my camera and that is flash (off) and ISO to reduce the noise that could come if the camera selected something over 800.
what it was
However, if that means that you have to set a long exposure time (leading to camerashake etc), by increasing the ISO you will be able to shorten the exposure time and get a clearer, more focused (but possibly grainier) photo.
If I can't hold the camera still enough to shoot at ISO 100, I increase it to 200 and try again. If that still doesn't allow me to shorten the exposure time enough to shoot without shaking I increase it to 400 (and so forth). This is because I'm not experienced enough to know what to set it before I start! The more I get used to using my camera on manual, the more I can correctly guess the ISO setting, but that's how I started figuring it out. Now if it's a bit dark, I won't bother trying with 100, and start at 400 or something instead (and work up from there).
Unless shooting with controlled lighting (like a studio), I use Auto ISO. I always have mine set to the lowest possible for my camera, and have the camera start bumping it up when shutter speeds fall below 1/30 or 1/60 (depends on what I am shooting).