What ISO speed range should my digital camera have?

What ISO speed range should my digital camera have?

Mark Comon (Vice President, Paul's Photo, Torrance, CA) gives expert video advice on: Can a digital camera capture high-quality video?; Can a cell phone capture high-quality stills?; Can a video camcorder capture high-quality digital stills? and more...

In general, for normal photography you need an ISO range of between 2 and 8 for general purpose photography. 2 for bright sunshine, outdoors and normal things. 4 for mixed light and low light family pictures. 8 for the occasional show, play or children's performance. You need higher ISOs for more specific low light kind of photography. If you are doing a lot of that kind of thing, you've got children in drama productions and playing indoor sports you may want something that goes to 16 or 32. If you are doing a lot of high quality, high colored landscape, tripod type of photography, you may want a camera that goes down in to the 5 to 1 range, but, those are more specific. So, in general, 2 to 8 is where you need to focus. All the digital cameras today have that.