Excellent question. [Answer: It depends.] In your original comment you have outlined what is very similar to the "Zone System," pioneered by Ansel Adams, and still very useful reading for every photographer. It ammounts to basically being able to visualize the scene, and how to set the camera to correctly record that scene. I applaud your craftsmanship. I'm usually lazy: with 35mm and strange lighting its cheap insurance to bracket. But for most conditions I do not. Color negative materials are pretty forgiving, (different story entirely with transparencies). Bracketing IS an issue with digitals; its just they can re-take immediately if the results aren't correct. Some of the digitals (as do some analogs) have "automatic" bracketing capability. I'd like to see the delay between exposures reduced by quite a lot before this was really useful. [Like 30mS?] I keep thinking about getting a cheap (1Mpix) digital just to use as a light meter for my analog camera. But I can't quite figure out how to properly translate the exposure settings. It'd be REAL slick if it could synchronize to an external flash...