Grapesoda

I tend to shoot in manual, so I would grab a quick meter read through the lens and then go to manual, set the camera up and grab a few pics... check the LCD to see how it looks etc... adjust what's needed and shoot who ever hits that spot that I need to shoot and guesstimate anything close to the area else until I setup for another position. with practice only takes a few seconds to dial in.. not good for sports but great for events where subjects are moving through a predefined area... like a sniper

while I have used exposure compensation in the past, since I shoot manual, I adjust the F stop... here's the thing about high ISO.... usually less saturation and more noise in the shadows. I don't mind the less saturaation... I shoot at 500 ISO as my normal setting and go way the fuck higher as needed. so looking at your camera specs I see that 1600 ISO is a real probability so I would assume the 1600 ISO is okay and looks good. I would try that. there are plug-ins to clean up any distracting shadow noise that work very well.

look at some of your images in post and see what ISO's your camera has been shooting at in 'auto ISO' that will give you some insight into what's going on. it's difficult for me to trust my camera to figure stuff out although the damn thing is probably smarter than I am.

another thing for me is I know for a fact that everything I shoot is going through photoshop so I only need to be close on a exposure and white balance... focus/composition has to be spot on but everything else is 'close is good enough, and if it's really fucked up it's a black and white' ...hehehe

the main thing is this tho.... if the stuff looks good enough the way you do it now... fuck it... just keep doing it that way photography turns into an expensive nightmare when you get the "fuck, it's gotta be perfect' bug. trust me on that... been there, done that.... not doing it again. I shoot to my target audience expectations.