GH1 Intelligent ISO. auto white balance (1 Viewer)

A year into owning my GH1 and I'm still experimenting. Yesterday I tried out the intelligent ISO feature for the first time. When intelligent iSO is selected the camera selects the iso based on the light levels and movement of the subject. The reason I wanted to try this out is that light levels change dramatically when moving from sun to shade. I find that as I walk on a trail I often have too slow an iso if the bird or animal is in deep shade.

So yesterday I set out with the camera on intelligent ISO. First up was a gray squirrel in the undergrowth. The camera picked a much slower shutter speed (by setting the iso at 400) than I would have selected. I also noted that the selected shutter speed (and indirectly iso) selected seems to account for the amount of zoom. Using my 100-300 zoom, it will pick a slower speed at 100 than at 300. The photos are pretty sharp at the slower speed so the algorithm seems to work.

The link below is a hand held shot of the squirrel using the intelligent iso feature. The shutter speed was only 1/200 at 258 mm zoom (516 600 mm equivalent).
http://rustyblades.smugmug.com/Natu...nd-Upgrades/16041918_UPUTr#1317035458_TRRTNsx

This link is of a shot of an oriole using the intelligent iso. Although it is a no brainer, the camera selected ISO 100 and I didn't have to do a thing. In the past I would have had the camera set manually at ISO 200.
http://rustyblades.smugmug.com/Natu...and-Updates/15416874_izQ3s#1316916062_LqZTG9p

A month ago I tried the Auto White Balance (AWB). I'm pleased with the results and I now leave the camera on on auto white balance and don't worry about moving from sun to shade.

Hi Paul,
thanks for sharing. What is the maximum iso that i-iso will select on the GH1? I went away from it with my GH2 because (if I remember correctly) the limitation was set at something like iso 400.

So far, I have the camera set at shutter priority, using something like 1/400 to 1/650 (for photos with the 100-300 which is mostly used at max zoom), with standard auto-iso and the delimiter set at iso 3200.

Niels

Niels

With the 100-300 I normally shoot with Aperture priority set at 6.3 to improve the depth of field and try to keep the shutter speed above 1/600. I may re-think this based on yesterday's outing and some pretty good results with the lower speeds.

As for your problem on the GH2 with ISO limit of 400, check out this thread

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1041&message=37717334&q=intelligent+iso&qf=m

In case the link doesn't work, the relevant section is pasted below,

"No, what you need to do is actually set the Auto-ISO limit. By default, the camera treats ISO 400 as the limit. If you actually set a limit, the camera will adhere to that limit. For example, I use ISO 800 as the limit on my G2. And even if the camera hits ISO 800, it doesn't underexpose the shot, if it has the ability to alter exposure further. Then it just drops the shutterspeed and/or opens the aperture as need be. If you are shutter priority mode, obviously the camera can't then alter the exposure beyond opening the aperture, once the ISO limit is set."

Paul

Thanks, that does make a little more sense. I think what happened was that I had changed to S-priority before setting the upper iso limit (to 3200), and at that setting, i-iso is turned off. Therefore, I had the impression that i-iso did not work once the settings had been changed for upper iso limit. I just changed to A-priority, and i-iso magically reappeared among the choices I had ...

Niels