Do you still need external lighting if your camera has very clean high ISO?

Asked 9/22/2011

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If a camera can shoot at high ISO with very little noise, does that eliminate the need for external light such as flash or continuous lighting? In what situations would external lighting still be necessary or clearly preferable?

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Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

15y ago

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Lighting is about a lot more than simply making a subject visible to the camera, it can change a shot dramatically so always relying on naturally occurring light severely limits creative outcome. You have to bear in mind that high ISO shots rely on the available light and will simply make the scene uniformly brighter the higher you go. The available light may be perfectly adequate to get a correct exposure at high ISO but may be so even for instance that the resulting image is flat and boring. In the other extreme if available light is very low boosting ISO will just give a uniformly bright image with no tonal range. Introducing external lights will add contrast and depth to the shot if done carefully.

Originally by user6603. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user6603

15y ago

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No. Clean high ISO reduces the need for extra light only when your goal is simply to record the existing scene. It does not replace what external lighting does.

Raising ISO makes all available light appear brighter, but it does not change the direction, quality, or ratio of light in the scene. If the light is flat, backlit, or poorly placed, high ISO will preserve those problems. Your subject may still be too dark relative to the background, and shadows will stay where they are.

External light is useful when you want to shape the image: add depth, create contrast, fill shadows, light a subject against a bright background, or control foreground separately from background. A repositionable light can do things available light cannot, especially when a reflector is not enough.

Flash and other added lights also behave differently from ISO: they affect nearby subjects much more than distant backgrounds, which is why they are often used to brighten a foreground subject without equally brightening the whole scene.

So external lighting is not always required, but it is still necessary whenever you need control over how the light falls on the subject, not just a brighter exposure.

Do you still need external lighting if your camera has very clean high ISO?

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