I shoot when I want. I mean... I'll avoid pitch dark night, unless if I really want to take shots, in which case I'll bring my SB-700.
I guess I avoid bad light. Uninteresting, flat light. If the day has lots of light, or nice light, then I'm fine with that. I think the scenario matters. If you're shooting, for example, an area with lots of trees and shade, then the dynamic range on your shots can end up being really bad... trees can look pretty bad with lots of black that has to be brought up, and lots of highlights that have to be brought down.
If I'm going out to shoot landscapes, I aim for sunset... I'm never up for sunrise anyways. But I don't think much about the time of day.
If I'm shooting wildlife (which is rare), I *hope* for as much light as possible, since I shoot with a 70-300 VR and given the lens isn't exceedingly sharp, bumping ISO above 1600 takes away from the appearance of sharpness even more... so I like getting a 1/1000 or quicker shutter (ideally 1/2000), and an ISO as low as possible in order to milk everything I can out of that budget telephoto setup. When it's an extremely bright day, I can get some really great shots out of it.
But that's just for enthusiast shooting.
This post was edited by Canadian_Man on Nov 21 2014 07:05pm