What about those action shots where the subject is moving?
For action photography, you need a fast shutter speed to avoid subject blur and a small(ish) aperture to give a reasonable depth of field. This usually results in constant adjustments to one or the other or the ISO setting when shooting.
Thanks to Peter Connan, I've now discovered a new use for Manual mode.
For action shots, particularly birds in flight, I set my camera to Manual 1/1600 shutter speed and F/8 aperture and then set Auto-ISO on and set the limits to 100-3200. When shooting, the shutter speed and aperture stay constant and the camera adjusts the ISO setting automatically between 100 and 3200 to compensate for light.
The downside of this mode is that the noise due to high ISO can become a factor, but I would rather have noise than blur because noise can be compensated for in post processing to a certain extent.
I now take all of my action shots using this method and I'm pretty pleased with the results.
These were taken at Austin Roberts Bird Sanctuary. The camera settings for each was 1/1600 @ F/8. The ISO is shown against each image in ().
Redknobbed Coot (ISO 720).
Yellowbilled Duck (ISO 720).
Purple Heron (ISO 720).
Pied Kingfisher at the hover (1. ISO 560: 2. ISO 500).
Giant Kingfisher : the same picture cropped differently - I can't make my mind up which one I prefer (ISO 800).
Giant Kingfisher hovering!!!!! (both at ISO 400)
And finally a diving Giant Kingfisher (ISO 1600).
Oh well........
