Camera Terminology

[ty48]

Pardon my ignorance but what does IS stand for and what does ISO stand for?

Ty

[boomer3297]

Pardon my ignorance but what does IS stand for and what does ISO stand for?

Ty
IS= Image Stabilization- a feature built into some lenses to eliminate camera shake..

ISO= In the old days of film, it has to do with the speed of the film.... I know someone will have something more technical for ISO..

[Collin85]

IS is Image Stabilization. In regards to Canon's P&S cameras, it's a few extra glass elements added into the lens setup which works on gyroscopes to minimise motion blur caused by hand shake while taking a shot.

ISO speed is a standard index which essentially defines the sensitivity of the image sensor. The higher the ISO, the more sensitive the sensor, however with more image noise resulting. Increasing the sensitivity of the sensor gives rise to the ability to stop-down the aperture of a lens (closing it) and increasing the shutter speed whilst resulting in the same exposure.

For example, if I was in a certain situation with poor lighting, such as inside a dark house or outside at night with only a few sources of ambience light around, and my camera could only support a shutter speed of 1/20th of a second at my chosen aperture, then I could potentially cause motion blur in my shots because my shutter speed is simply too low (assuming the lens I use at it's current focal length supports this so). Then I could either open up the aperture more (which isn't always possible since if you are shooting under poor lighting, you would usually have the aperture already wide-open), or I could turn up the ISO speed from say, ISO 100 to ISO 400. This would then allow me to make the shot at 1/80th of a second instead, a much faster shutter speed.

An inherent advantage of dSLR cameras vs. small Point and Shoots is that dSLRs have significantly bigger image sensors, which results in a much better high-ISO performance (much less noise). My old S3-IS's ISO 200 looked similar to my dSLRs at ISO 800.

[ty48]

Thank you both
Ty