Please bare with me here as photography is not my strong point underground, I have just purchased a new Fuji Finepix S5600 (Bargin at £149 from Pixmainia) 

The good lady has given me her FireFly2 to play with and the results have been okay.

BUT my question is WHAT does the ISO setting do ? this new camera has an ISO setting of 64 - 1600, will adjusting this make the pictures any better ?

Any pointers greatly appreiciated.

Stu.

ISO is the film speed. Now I know there is no film but the ISO setting will simulate the charecteristics of the different types of films.
If you increase the ISO you will make the 'film' more sensitive and 'faster' and better for low light shots or action shots. The trade off is that faster settings will produce more grainy pictures. It's a trade off and the best thing to do is to try it out.
The best option is for the lowest ISO ie. 100 and a good level of light, but you will blur moving objests without a high shutter speed, and a high shutter speed will reduce the available light in the lens, so you will need faster 'film'.

Use the Lowest ISO you can get away with and the slowest shutter you can get away with for the best (brightest, most colourful) photos.

However, the CCD is quite sensitive anyway and digital cameras are much better in low light conditions so you can "push the envelope" quite a bit without seeing the effects in the phots, and anyway, there is always Photoshop

Nice one Les, that was well written in good old plain English that I could understand.

You should be a teacher 

I will have a play about with it, by default the ISO is set to Auto so I assume it adjusts itself ! I have been using a mini tripod with the FireFly and a 3" Shutter, the results were not to bad (In my eyes), below is the first picture I took with it, any comments (too dark, too light or plain crap). - I am holding the slave in front of me.



Cheers

Stu

Looks fine to me. 

Where is it?

Swildon's 13 ...................

Stupot said:

Swildon's 13 ...................

Click to expand...

Looks very similar to Holmebank Chert Mine ?

martinr said:

Stupot said:

Swildon's 13 ...................

Click to expand...

Looks very similar to Holmebank Chert Mine ?

Click to expand...

Oh yeah, that picture was Holmebank, I couldn't get the camera into Swildon's 13 

Stu.

wherever STUNNIG result, keep going

Stu,
I notice that you have a blue wetsuit in the photo but that your avatar seems to have a silver one. Now I know you cave divers like your kit but, two wetsuits

Also noted that you seem to have rather large moobs (man boobs) in your avatars picture. 

I really must change my avatar, so many people call and want to cave with me, they go away very dissapointed 

Les W said:

Stu,
I notice that you have a blue wetsuit in the photo

Click to expand...

Hey, that's no wetsuit, that's my new £900 drysuit which I was a little nervous about taking into a mine for risk of getting mud on it 

I don't have 2 wetsuits, I actually have (on last count) 9 wetsuits, although I think only about 4 still fit...........

Stu.

Here we go Les I have changed my Avatar to me without my wetsuit on 

Stu.

Stu I can think of a better home for that dry suit. I see you're using your bungies, Martyn will be pleased.

you see , everyone should take up cave diving.