Flash photography tip: Think about your ISO
Tuesday 14 October 2025, 16:32 by Elja Trum | 2,128 views | 0 commentsThis article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.
An important element in flash photography is the sensor sensitivity (ISO) you set. This affects both your flash and the ambient light. You can make your entire image darker or lighter by adjusting your ISO.
With a lot of ambient light, you can choose the lowest possible ISO so you can make the ambient light relatively easy to darken in your photo. Your flash will then have to work harder to light your subject, and will therefore use more batteries.
If there is little ambient light, you can use a higher ISO so the surroundings can still play a part in your photo.
An added benefit of a higher ISO is that your flash does not need to fire as powerfully. With modern cameras, you can easily go up to 1,600 or 3,200 ISO without noise appearing in your image.
About the author
Elja Trum is the founder of Photofacts and online photography course website Photofacts Academy. He has been writing about photography since 2006. Elja is also the author of (Dutch) books on composition, black-and-white photography, flash photography and portrait photography.
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Elja Trum
Photofacts; everything to do with photography!
Would you like to take better photos and keep up with what is happening in photography? Photofacts publishes articles that teach you something about photography — from a product announcement to a practical shooting tip or a look at a website. Photofacts covers photography every day and is a hobby project of Elja Trum's that got out of hand. The articles are written by a team of volunteer authors. If you would enjoy writing one or more articles for Photofacts, do get in touch.More about PhotofactsPhotofacts is made possible in part by
