Comments on: Merge Avoidance & Seeing the Crop In the Field https://www.birdsasart-blog.com/baa/2025/01/21/merge-avoidance-seeing-the-crop-in-the-field/ The blog of bird photographer Arthur Morris Fri, 07 Mar 2025 14:23:49 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.3 By: Bryan Holliday https://www.birdsasart-blog.com/baa/2025/01/21/merge-avoidance-seeing-the-crop-in-the-field/comment-page-1/#comment-2383704 Sat, 25 Jan 2025 17:04:35 +0000 https://www.birdsasart-blog.com/baa/?p=92744#comment-2383704 In reply to Arthur Morris/BIRDS AS ART.

Thanks Artie 🙂 I follow all of your examples, and agree with your exposure compensations, which would adjust the ISO to finalize your settings.

Manual mode with AUTO ISO is doing the same thing. You are able to use Exposure Compensation while shooting in Manual mode with AUTO ISO. You can assign EC to whatever dial you want, such as your rear dial on Sony bodies. Or leave it up on the top right dial. You set your shutter speed and aperture, the camera chooses the ISO. As you dial in your compensation, the camera adjusts the ISO. You only need to change one parameter, the EC.

Isn’t this accomplishing the same thing as your Shutter Priority method with AUTO ISO with EC, or am I missing something?

]]> By: Arthur Morris/BIRDS AS ART https://www.birdsasart-blog.com/baa/2025/01/21/merge-avoidance-seeing-the-crop-in-the-field/comment-page-1/#comment-2382786 Fri, 24 Jan 2025 02:57:30 +0000 https://www.birdsasart-blog.com/baa/?p=92744#comment-2382786 In reply to Bryan Holliday.

Hi Bry,

Good to see you here. 🙂

#1- As far as I can understand, shooting in Manual mode with AUTO ISO is 100% insanity. The camera has no way of adjusting for light and dark backgrounds or anything else.

#2: Shutter Priority with AUTO ISO with Exposure Compensation (EC) on a convenient dial works very well in a variety of situations. For example: shooting blurs in the early morning at the beach where all the backgrounds are light toned. I pick my shutter speed and dial in from +2 to +3 stops of EC. The camera sets the ISO and I am good to go. If I want to do a static shot, I simply increase the shutter speed to 1/125 or 1/250 or whatever. One simple change.

Another example. Doing ducks this afternoon. I had ducks in full sun and others in the shade. For the ones in the sun zero to -1 EC was the ticket. For those in the shade, +1 2/3 to +2 was needed.

In both of the cases above, I only needed to change one parameter, the EC. If you were working in manual mode in either of those situations you would need to change both the shutter speed and then the ISO, often many, many clicks. Yes, you need to know what you are doing exposure-wise, but that is true in any mode. And yes, Sony Zebra technology makes life easier that with Canon or Nikon. So the folks who say that real photographers use manual mode 100% of the time are really misguided. In some situations, Shutter Priority with AUTO ISO and EC is much faster and more efficient.

And the same was true even in the days of film 🙂

with love, artie

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