Why Manual Exposure is Better for Winter Wildlife Photography?

ive got 4 digi cams plus several film cams amd the rx1 is the only one i use for autofocus. no doubt sometimes its useful, but i believe mf can be used effectively in many situations, the above being one of them. also i really enjoy focusing manually.
 
the article is about exposing, not focusing, manually ;)
To me, the gist of the article only makes sense when the lighting is fairly constant and even, for instance when there's a consistent grey cloud cover. When lighting conditions change, you'll have to adjust your manual exposure regularly as well, and in those cases I'd rather remember to dial in exposure bias depending on the brightness of my subject (spot or center weighed metering), than evaluating the entire scene every time a cloud moves or I face another direction.
 
I disagree with the author. He is assuming everyone is using a matrix mode for exposure. And if all he is concerned with is properly exposing his subject in the snow, he should use a spot meter on his subject.

I also strongly disagree with his apparent propensity to overexpose in the snow. I shoot in the snow A LOT. And I am nearly always underexposing by 1-2 EV to keep from clipping highlights. It's much easier brighten underexposed areas of the frame than to pull details out of blown out highlight areas.
 
I disagree with the author. He is assuming everyone is using a matrix mode for exposure. And if all he is concerned with is properly exposing his subject in the snow, he should use a spot meter on his subject.

I also strongly disagree with his apparent propensity to overexpose in the snow. I shoot in the snow A LOT. And I am nearly always underexposing by 1-2 EV to keep from clipping highlights. It's much easier brighten underexposed areas of the frame than to pull details out of blown out highlight areas.

Since you bring it up, I had the same thought. I suppose the idea is that the snow is background for some non-white object and you want to get the object right. Still, I agree with using the spot metering approach. Given the LCD for review, it's all just different ways of using the meter to get the look you want.
 
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