Set Your Camera at Its Lowest Native ISO

If you’re going to be making gorgeously sharp, crisp landscape images, you’re usually going to be shooting on a tripod (or at least, hopefully, you’ll be shooting on a tripod), and if you’re shooting on a tripod, you need to be at your lowest, cleanest native ISO, which for most cameras these days is 100 ISO. Yes, you’ll find a camera make/model here and there where its cleanest native ISO is 50 or even 200, but as a general rule, it’s 100 ISO (if you’re not sure what your cleanest native ISO is, check the PDF of your user’s manual). Now, what if you’re hand-holding instead of using a tripod? Don’t hand-hold. Not if you want that legendary sharpness you’re after, and if you’re shooting at the right time of day, when the light is beautiful and the shadows are soft, you absolutely need to be on a tripod. Now, what about that instance where it’s a big, bright, beautiful mid-day sky, and while the light or shadows aren’t awesome, it’s still worth shooting? What then? In that case, you’d use 100 ISO. What? Sure! If it’s super-bright outside, your shutter speed will be crazy fast (probably over 1/2000 of a second), and you’ll still get a really sharp shot with that fast a shutter speed. Not tripod sharp, but ya know, still pretty darn sharp.