Originally posted by justtakingpics If you are doing anything but the most trivial, do you adjust the camera settings for a picture or do you let the camera decide? When do you put it in manual? When do you decide you know better than the auto settings on the dslr?
Well, let's deal with that last question first. It's never a question of who knows better. That's like asking, "Who knows better what to do with the nail: me, or the hammer?" Like the hammer, the camera doesn't know squat. It's a tool. The question is, do you know how to use it?
So let's say you're in ordinary P mode—where you let the camera determine your exposure settings. Using P mode on your camera, your settings will change with practically every shot. YOU aren't changing them, they're changing automatically. That's what P does.
Now, using P is a perfectly reasonable thing to do for many photographers. It's like using automatic transmission on your car as you drive around the city day to day. On the other hand, I may be wrong (know nothing about NASCAR) but I bet professional race-car drivers do NOT use automatic transmission. And professional photographers generally don't use ordinary P mode.*
Why not? Well, it's
not because pros are unwilling to make things easy on themselves! Personally I would be delighted to shoot in P mode—if it allowed me to get what I want. The problem is, the camera doesn't KNOW how I want to take the picture, any more than the hammer knows where I want to bang the nail. The camera doesn't know that this shot is a portrait and I want just the eyes in focus. It doesn't know that the next shot is of a kid doing a somersault. It doesn't know that I don't care about the strong backlighting that's overwhelming the meter and that what really matters to me is the face of the subject.
For most amateurs, the main challenge—indeed, the ONLY challenge they're interested in—is picking the moment of capture (i.e. when to click the shutter) and perhaps composing the shot. Many people are happy with those challenges forever, and that's cool. But if you start to care about other elements of the photo, then you MUST exert control over what the camera is doing, and you must do it ON EVERY SINGLE SHOT. Controlling the settings of every single shot does not mean that you must CHANGE the settings constantly! It just means that you must constantly be aware of the settings you're chosen and be prepared to change them when necessary.
And it doesn't matter whether you do this in Av and Tv mode, with or without using EC, or whether you do it in M. Some of the most famous photographers in the world (I can think of several) stay in Av mode 90% of the time. Others insist on using nothing but M. Doesn't matter. What matters is being in control.
Will
*I call it "ordinary P mode" to make it clear to owners of the K10D/K20D or K-7 that I'm not talking about hyperprogram (P) mode on their cameras. Hyperprogram (P) is basically just a way to switch into effective Av or Tv mode without having to change the mode dial. In other words, while in "ordinary P mode," the camera really is making the decisions, in hyperprogram (P) mode, the photographer can make the decisions.