i'm stupid sometimes...

I went out the other day shooting. Beautiful day, great light, all the best conditions and I came home very pleased that I had some good shots. Then I realised that I've been all day long on iso 1600 from the previous night and of course all pics are very very noisy and not usable.
Do you ever do this kind of stupid mistakes?

YOU ARE NOT THE FIRST. I had a once in a life time shooting session. A butterfly still pumping up its wings so it couldn't fly. I was able to put him where ever I wanted him to take shots for 20 minutes before he was able to fly. Only later did I realize I had it on 800 from the night before.

Don't feel bad. I shot a low light wedding reception last night and forgot to change the ISO from 1600 when I shot at the Exotic Feline Rescue Center today. I could just kick myself!

Blah....I've shot'em at 3200 before. I was thinking "Wow, it must be brighter then I think outside. 1/4000 sec at F/11!"

Yes, i do it a lot hahahaha but generally if i am shooting a wedding i am switched on, if im just shooting outside for myself - i make stupid mistakes like this!

dan, I do that ALL the time! I get so frustrated at myself. I've vowed to make checking hte ISO the first thing I do every time I pick up my camera. Do I do it all the time? Heck no. I had some beautiful shots at a lake recently. I actually had to stop it way down to get what I wanted. Only later did I discover that I had it at iso 400! Argghhh!! I hate the noise at that level (unless you have no choice).

I literally missed conditions that were unbeatable. No people on the lake. No wind. Absolutely perfect...oh well, not much I can do about it now.

I wish Canon would introduce a custom function that would give the user an option to display the ISO on the screen. My Minolta A2 had that feature, and it was great.

Nope, never done that. I'm always aware of the lighting conditions and my shot settings, and adjusting the iso accordingly.

Which camera do you have that iso1600 would be unuseable? Only the Drebel and older would qualify for this. Remember that reducing the image size is a great way of noise reduction - which will show how it'll look when you print it. But if you need to crop tight and only view on a monitor at around 72dpi - then it might be fair.

Or a C.Fn to reset the camera to defined presets if the camera has been powered down for more than a few hours. THAT would have saved my bacon more than once.

I used to do it constantly.. But, here's my trick.. when putting camera away I set it to green box.. when I go to use it again I have to adjust all my settings and therefore ISO gets set correctly....

savarose - good idea, I usually take at least 1 shot before checking my ISO. I was trying to get into the habit of resetting it to 100 when I am done.

Yeah never done it either. At least not for more than 3 or 4 shots after bumping up ISO if I temporarily moved into a low light situation. Not trying to sound conceited but something in the sky high shutter speed or closed apertures should have given it away.

Anyway one thing I always do when I first switch on the camera is press the info button and do a quick scan of my settings making sure to check ISO. I too wish ISO was in the viewfinder and also a CFn that would allow ISO to return to a preselected base line after taking a shot. That would be ideal for those situations where you move into a light situation for a one off shot.

My wrong ISO setting shots have come down hugely - first step when I switch on the camera is to check ISO

More than that, I try to play with manual settings and then you are forced to use all variables and while its tempting to leave ISO out of the equation, I find it helps atleast in not getting ISO 1600 shots in daylight

Who's to say that noise = not useable. All depends on what you are shooting and what the end result is meant to be. I've done it and in the end ended up adding more noise to get the effect that made the shot sing.

Oh, yes, I've done it. I've done it on important shots. I'm trying to get in the habit of checking the ISO when I power up the camera and that gets ISO on my mind so that I'm always thinking about it when I'm shooting. I will often forget that important part of the exposure equation and get frustrated trying to get good shots.