E-520 and AutoISO in Manual mode (1 Viewer)

I often use my camera when I'm birding from before sunrise. Naturally I have to start with the camera on ISO 1600 because it's so dark, and gradually decrease the ISO as more light becomes available. I normally use AV mode.

Recently I had the idea to configure the camera to make Auto ISO available in Manual mode. Now I can just set it to Manual mode, dial in a reasonable shutter speed and maximum aperture, and let the camera do the thinking for me by adjusting the ISO to suit. I increase the shutter speed when I get more light.

This has been working reasonably well, however, I'm using an old MF lens that requires an exposure compensation of -1, or I get overexposure. In AV mode, I can leave the compensation set to -1 permanently, and it works fine. But exposure compensation isn't available in Manual mode, which is logical unless you're using Auto ISO - how would it know what you want to adjust to do the compensation?

So it look like I have to go back to AV mode. Anyone got any ideas that would let me get around this problem?

Not many answers here on this one! I asked the same question at forum.fourthirdsphoto.com and got a few replies. The now obvious answer was to use S mode, which with a manual lens is effectively the same as M mode, but has exposure compensation.

I tried it out, and it seems to do what I want. Googling around, it seems a few people are starting to use this method. It's interesting that we've had auto ISO available for years, even on the cheapest compact cameras, yet ISO is still mostly treated like something that must be kept constant, rather than just a third variable. I guess digital photography has been widely available for perhaps 10 years. Maybe it takes longer than that to undo the habits we learned using film for a century or so.