Steve Perry Loc: Sylvania, Ohio

Auto ISO is simply a tool and can be incredibly beneficial if you know how to use it. The only autoexposure mode I use when shooting wildlife is Manual + Auto ISO. This allows me to set the shutter speed and F/stop while the camera floats the ISO. This puts the two most important exposure controls into your hands. Sure, sometimes I need full manual mode, but when the situation is such that you can let the camera do some of the work, I don't think you can beat M + Auto ISO (often with a little exposure comp).

Check out my wildlife galleries - 70~80% of the images you see were shot using M + Auto ISO (The rest were full manual mode)
https://backcountrygallery.com/wildlife/

I did a video on the technique if you want to take look:
https://backcountrygallery.com/manual-mode-with-auto-iso/

Acountry330 Loc: Dothan,Ala USA

In changing light auto ISO is the way to go.But as you should know everything is fast action shooting is a crap shoot. My D-800 does real well in auto ISO. Happy shooting.

rook2c4 Loc: Philadelphia, PA USA

Experiment, analyze and practice! The more you do this, the faster you will learn and gain an understanding about what will and will not work in different situations.

willy6419

Great advise. Yes, i realize Photoshop is the next stop. I use manual for static. This forum really works great and i appreciate all your comments and will work with them to find best for me. The D 500 is much better than the D 750 in a lot of ways, and should be. Perhaps someday, the next gen, but hobbyists spend money, we don't earn money!

Steve Perry Loc: Sylvania, Ohio

One more quick story for you about M+ Auto ISO.

On my first trip to Costa Rica, I was out with the two owners of the resort we use for our trips. My camera was, as usual, set to M + Auto ISO. They were using Aperture Priority. They've shot there lots of times before, this was my first attempt.

The thing about shooting under the canopy is that one moment your subject is in bright light, the next he's in shadow. The exposure is constantly changing AND you need to maintain enough shutter speed to stop the action as well. However, the frequent backlit conditions also demand the highest dynamic range you can get. As ISO increases, Dynamic Range decreases, so you ALWAYS want the lowest ISO possible.

So, my companions were constantly chasing ISO and missing shots. When the animal was in a bright patch, they'd stop and adjust their ISO to a lower value. A few seconds later, when the animal was in darker conditions, they'd need to increase ISO to maintain a fast enough shutter speed for the shot so once again they lost time fiddling with ISO.

It wasn't long before they noticed I had no such problem and that I was easily capturing far more images and not missing any shots. The reason for this was because I was in M + Auto ISO. I knew I wanted to be around 1/1000th to stop action, so I set that first. I wanted the lens wide open for the max light and to keep the backgrounds from getting too busy. These two parameters never needed changed. By using Auto ISO, the camera always gave me the minimum / proper ISO required for the situation. So, when I was in bright light, the camera would maybe drop to ISO 200 or 400. When the subject when to a darker area, the camera jumped to ISO 1600 or 3200. I would have needed those ISOs to maintain my shutter speed anyway, but by letting the camera do it, there was no time lost.

Within two days, they were both using M + Auto ISO and much happier for it :)

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

Auto ISO with a limit based on your camera's performance at high ISO works well in producing very workable RAW files. Not quite so well for the JPGs.

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

joer Loc: Colorado/Illinois

Auto ISO may not be the best for all shooting situations but...its the absolute best setting for situations when you need to control the DOF and shutter speed at the same time or varying light and you need to shoot quickly. I use it nearly all the time for shooting birds.

Set the low end to the native ISO and the high end to the max. Better to get noise which can easily be improved or eliminated than to miss the shot due under exposure, motion blur or lack of DOF.

Check out my bird images...most a with auto ISO.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

👍👍 Manual shutter and Aperture plus auto ISO has become my default mode for most situations with changing light. It helps if your camera handles high ISOs well, but for those that don’t, most bodies allow setting an upper limit. A high ISO shot may have more noise than you like, but a missed shot or a blurred one due to inadequate shutter speed is useless.

JohnSwanda Loc: San Francisco

It's a good idea to do ISO tests with your camera, so you can see for yourself at what setting the noise gets to be objectionable to you. Then you can use that to set the upper limit on your Auto ISO.

willy6419

great photos, Joe. The advice and experience i received really help me know I'm on the right track, so onward to more learning and expertise

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

Jeffcs Loc: Myrtle Beach South Carolina

I use auto ISO for high school sports only even though D5 & D500 have really good high iso quality I’d never use it for something like what your looking to do

Feiertag Loc: British Columbia, Canada

The long and short is I always shot auto ISO with manual settings. The only time I don't use auto is when I shoot the moon and fireworks.
Harold

Jerrin1 Loc: Wolverhampton, England

I was going to suggest you watch Steve Perry's video on YouTube, but I see he has already posted. I use auto ISO all the time; as most of my wildlife shots are off the cuff. There are no hides/blinds where I live so most of my images are taken as I walk along. Auto ISO is brilliant when shooting between different lighting conditions. With my EM1 mark II I can literally be taking an image of a perched bird in a hedgerow, then see an bird in flight and change my cameras settings blindingly fast by means of my C1, C2 and C3 and keeping my camera on auto ISO. I also own a Nikon D500 and it works equally well on that.