Originally posted by Genshu 
Here is a classic example. Great moment gone to waste. Generally I love going dslr and dont want to go back. Guess saying that I shoot point and shoot is a bit of an exaduration, but when shooting kids they just are very quick! I have been doing center spot only and recompose for a while now, so that I get a little miffed when it still happens.
I tried manual focus for a while, but found it quite difficult. If it was possible to get the focus helpers like split screen from the old days, then I would be happy to stick with manual focus.
In that kind of picture situation I would have focused directly on the trunk of the tree between them. Not on the kids. That's a bit dark, so adjusting exposure a bit manually might have really been a must there. Most AF lenses I've had so far just can't quite get it right in situations like that. I almost always have to tweak some settings by hand. The camera would have likely gotten a better focus and the shot might have been a bit lighter and brighter that way even using AF if you had set it to plus 1 maybe then let the camera take the shot.
The more wide the shot is on my K-x, the more human subjects, the darker the setting is, the more I find I have to find a central point in my mind's eye to focus on. Never mind the camera's idea of focus for a second. The focus point in my imagination has to come first. The K-x actually has much better AF and auto exposure I think than my *ist ever did, but still it's a machine and it can't focus or expose exactly like the human eye. You do have to think about it and tweak it a bit. The program modes and auto modes on the K-x are good, but still the camera needs you to put in more input sometimes. Even my old upscale point and shoot, and it was a good one, would have likely failed to get that on auto. Some lighting situations are tricky even in full manual and you'd not really expect the camera to be able to get those automatically.
I use both, more AF of late because my eyes are having issues, and I'm always going to manual for the really hard situations anyway because the camera simply needs more info that it can gather in point and shoot mode. That's basically a little computer in your hand. It can do some things very well, but sometimes it still sucks a bit at doing everything we'd like it to be able to do. Think voice recognition. How many of us would love to be able to use our voices to command every thing on our machines? Yet programs that say you can do that seldom work 100% because the device using them is a machine and a machine will always have issues with comprehending a human voice and it's owner's intent. How to know when to use their versus there or your versus you're for instance. It simply can't get that right all the time no matter how good the program is.
Digital cameras are a bit like that. They try in their way to see what we do, pick what settings we think might be best for a setting, but until they can make a camera that truly sees like a human eye there will always be mistakes, and probably even them because even the human eye can be fooled at times.
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