The original post: /r/photography by /u/JamesK1220 on 2025-01-22 13:17:00.

So this might be a bad question because I’m trying to group two exposure techniques into one very general umbrella of “wildlife”.

Sometimes a bird is flying fast in the air, sometimes an animal is just chilling and not moving. Sometimes the lighting changes rapidly in a matter of moments. I get that the techniques used are scenario driven, but the point of this question is to develop use cases, as a novice, for different scenarios.

The past couple days I’ve researched a lot on metering. I always shoot manual, but I’m brand new, so I always get my shutter and aperture right, then usually by the time I fine tune my ISO, whatever I wanted to shoot is either gone or in a different condition for the shot. So, I’ve tried to develop an understanding of metering and what conditions warrant what types of metering options (rule of thumb I’ve got is for very constant lighting, matrix works good slightly underexposed since shadows are more forgiving than highlights in post, and for very contrasty scenes, best to use center or spot to make sure your SUBJECT is exposed well… same principle of slightly under for subject).

But one other technique I learned about today is bracketing! I’m doing a lot of research about how it works on my camera, and trying to wrap my head around when I’d want to use that instead of just plain auto iso.

It makes sense how it works and how it can give you a larger dynamic range. Taking multiple photos in a short period and then merging them will give you the best highlights and the best shadows all at once. This seems kind of useless though if, say, you’re handheld and the brighter shots are trying to get a 1/30 shutter or something, or if your subject isn’t still. Pretty sure my D750 does 4.5 fps continuous shooting, so if I take 5 shots, that’s about a second of wind and movement that’ll be picked up, even on a tripod.

So, it seems to me bracketing is best when you have a VERY still subject, and only on a tripod, in a super high contrast scene. Would it be best to just get really good at managing auto iso, and sticking to that?