Do you shoot in Auto mode?

FishyFish

FishyFish

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I was watching a video recently from someone I follow on Youtube where he commented that he always uses his camera in Auto mode. His reason for this is that he feels he will miss the moment if he has to stop to consider the settings, even in semi-auto.

A counter to this might be that, the more you use the semi-auto and manual modes on your camera, the more adept you will become so that it becomes second nature and quick to do.

I normally use AP as the default starting mode for most of my shots and then change things around as and when I feel it's necessary, and I think the only time I've ever tended to use Auto is when my wife or kids were taking a shot, as it essentially turns the camera into a point-and-shoot. I decided to give Auto (or Intelligent Auto as it's known on my camera) a go on my GX7 to see how it would fare though (not for everything, but in situations where I might see a spur-of-the-moment photo opportunity that needs a fast reaction). The results have, on the whole, been pretty good - in a lot of situations the camera has produced the same results that I'd get if I'd set the controls manually. It's "intelligent" enough to set the aperture to produce a shallow depth of field when photographing portrait type shots, and handle front to back sharpness well in more open pictures. It's obviously not perfect - if I want to ensure the focus is on an eye, or a specific leaf or something in the scene, then I need to switch to another mode to ensure I get what I want as in some situations the focus doesn't know quite where I want it to be, or the aperture / shutter speed isn't what I'd like - but overall it's works pretty well.

To some extent, using auto makes me feel a bit of a charlatan and that I'm 'letting the side down' in some silly way*, but I think in some situations (street-type shots for instance) it could be my go-to mode from now on as it allows me to just concentrate on what's happening around me rather than realising the AF point is at the wrong side of the frame to what I want or something and then missing a shot while I faff around. I'm not going to start using it exclusively and hand control of all my shots to the camera, but at the end of the day, I'm more interested in what comes out of the camera than the way in which I'm using the controls, and in this regard Auto is a useful addition to the other modes in the right situation.



* This is tempered by the fact that I'm shooting a lot more film of late, and that is (largely) completely manual (including estimating the light in many cases). :)
 
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Some good points especially street stuff if one is not too familiar with the camera as yet
 
I can't say as I've ever used auto on my cameras, even when I was starting out. The allure of control and discovering what did what was too much!

These days, now I have much faster lenses, I tend to use aperture mode, set a minimum shutter and let auto ISO do its thing. That's never really let me down, and is somewhat a take on letting the camera think for itself.
 
Not used full auto mode in years, mostly use AP. Set to auto, the camera does not know what you want.
 
jonbeeza said:
Not used full auto mode in years, mostly use AP. Set to auto, the camera does not know what you want.
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Yeah, I'm the same. AP most of the time, but what I've found after a bit of testing is that full auto will get it right in certain situations a lot of the time. I certainly wouldn't advocate it for everything, but as a useful fall-back in certain types of situations, it's a viable thing to use. As a quick test just now, I took a couple of shots of some stuff lying on the desk. The first is in Auto, the second is an AP. The second shot took longer to set up and take as I had to manually set the point of focus on Mario's face and the aperture to get the shallow DOF I wanted, whereas the auto shot pretty much nailed it instantly. Now, in the interests of balance, had my intention been to have the entire desktop in focus, then Auto would have been an abject failure in this case, so it's certainly not something I would rely on if I had a specific outcome in mind, but in certain fast-changing situations, it can be a viable method to use to avoid losing the shot or saving a bit of time.

Auto mode f/1.7, 1/60sec,ISO 800.
autotest.jpg

Aperture priority, f/2, 1/60 sec, ISO 1600.
autotest-2.jpg
 
Sometimes, but rarely. Usually Av, Tv or P, though also M at times too.
 
FishyFish said:
Yeah, I'm the same. AP most of the time, but what I've found after a bit of testing is that full auto will get it right in certain situations a lot of the time. I certainly wouldn't advocate it for everything, but as a useful fall-back in certain types of situations, it's a viable thing to use. As a quick test just now, I took a couple of shots of some stuff lying on the desk. The first is in Auto, the second is an AP. The second shot took longer to set up and take as I had to manually set the point of focus on Mario's face and the aperture to get the shallow DOF I wanted, whereas the auto shot pretty much nailed it instantly. Now, in the interests of balance, had my intention been to have the entire desktop in focus, then Auto would have been an abject failure in this case, so it's certainly not something I would rely on if I had a specific outcome in mind, but in certain fast-changing situations, it can be a viable method to use to avoid losing the shot or saving a bit of time.

Auto mode f/1.7, 1/60sec,ISO 800.
View attachment 90132

Aperture priority, f/2, 1/60 sec, ISO 1600.
View attachment 90133
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Yes it can be useful, if you can choose your focus point..
 
I guess as well that it'll vary considerably from camera to camera on how effective it can be. More recent cameras are likely to have much more viable auto modes than older models. Mine seems to nail the focus points most of the time, but it doesn't tend to get them right on specific focussing, e.g I tried some test shots of my cat the other day and the camera picked a nice wide aperture that seperated it from the background, but out of about five shots, only one had the eyes spot on in terms of sharpness. The others would be focussed on his nose or ears etc. But in those cases I most likely wouldn't choose to use auto anyway because I'd know specifically what I wanted in terms of focussing.
 
My cameras only have Program, Aperture and Shutter Priority and Manual modes. I use them all - it depends on the situation, however to date no one has ever asked me what mode I shot a particular photograph with. I won't go so far as to say it doesn't matter, but as long as you understand exposure, what each mode does it probably matters less than you think.
 
No doubt it's on this wonderful forum somewhere, but could sks explain the difference - if any - between program mode and auto - please!
 
As all of the lenses I use regularly are manual focus, manual aperture, I couldn't even if I wanted to.
 
Midland Red said:
No doubt it's on this wonderful forum somewhere, but could sks explain the difference - if any - between program mode and auto - please!
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With Auto, the camera decides everything except when to press the shutter release.
With Program mode, the camera decides the exposure but the photographer gets to decide on the combination of shutter speed and aperture to produce that exposure.
 
You could be describing me here, I starting keeping my Panasonic TZ60 in Intelligent Auto when wandering around so it's ready to use whatever crops up and it has come in useful. When stopping to take a specific shots though I will switch over to a semi auto or manual mode depending on subject or effect wanted. Not sure what magic Panasonic have packed into their cameras, have also tried it with my Canon gear and it's nowhere near as effective at reading the situation how I would have.
Perhaps they are telepathic :)
 
Midland Red said:
No doubt it's on this wonderful forum somewhere, but could sks explain the difference - if any - between program mode and auto - please!
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Auto is like P, except you can't mess with ISO or other manual overrides. Manual focus is also locked out iirc. It really tries to be foolproof. Where P is similar to A and S, as you can tweak it to your preferences.

Apologies if you have different letters.

I start out with Ps. Program Shift. I roll towards Aperture or back towards Shutter as it needs it. When I find a scene to dwell on I'll go into the other modes as required.

Don't remember using full Auto ever though.
 
I didn't spend thousands of £'s on loads of electronic techno trickery, and 'expert' programming in it, that will do everything from take twenty spot-meter readings across my scene, perform myriad calculations based on them to work out an EV, and then set the shutter speed, aperture and even the ruddy 'film-speed' for me based on it, AND even focus the ruddy lens whilst it's about it to turn all that 'off' and faff about trying to DIY it all 'Manually', like I had to with my old Clockwork Zenit, or any of the other old film cameras.... IF I want that sort of 'faff'.. might as well leave the electric picture maker at home and take one of the proper cameras :-)

I mean there is a point, where if you aren't utilizing the 'easements' offered by a modern fully automatic 'point and press' digital camera, and are consciously disregarding them, for little more than the pretension of being a 'proper photographer', and faffing about shooting in manual, in raw and mucking about with sliders in post process, to 'take control' you have to consider whether you are short changing yourself somewhat...

Shooting an old, clock-work film camera, probably without even an inbuilt Through-The-Lens meter; demanding you meter with a separate hand held meter, possibly taking incident readings rather than reflected, or metering entirely by 'eye', after assessing your scene, before you even think to make appropriate settings, then having to compose, probably with a fixed angle of view 'prime' lens, you have to physically swap to get a wider angle or closer telephoto framing, as well as twiddle into focus, that on many, without WYSIWYG through the lens composition, may beg even more faff, measuring focus distance with a range-finder or even a tape measure, or assessing distances by relative scale and guess work, and using that to ponder the more appropriate apertures for best Depth of Field around your subject, before making actual 'settings' and taking your shot. Plenty more opportunity in that lot to 'take control' and faff about, before you get to the added dimension of getting the film out the camera, and taking direct control of extracting the image, brewing it up in the chemicals, where you might tweek the timings or concentrations, or indulge in push or pull processing, and then, have to take that negative or transparency, and turn it into a view-able artifact, making a chemical 'print' under an enlarger, with even more opportunity for 'control' or faff, tweeking exposure, adjusting contrast, dodging and burning and the like, or scanning and manipulating n the digital dark-room.

It's something of an irony, 'now' that Digital Cameras offer SO much 'automation' and alleviate the need to apply thought and make conscious decisions, so many 'feel' they aren't 'doing photography', and have to start switching off some of the more useful easements to get involved and do 'anything' at all....

I mean, 'Gong manual' people turn off the automatic exposure metering; they probably still use the cameras TTL metering, and simply make their own ISO, shutter and aperture settings based on it; they DON'T really assess the exposure any better for themselves; and they probably don't turn off the Auto-Focus.. see comments above.. if you DON'T have Through The Lens SLR composition, and have to set focus and Depth of Field 'By the Scale'... where you could exploit that for 'Selective Focus', and NOT be restricted by the cameras AF system trying to find a 'subject' in the scene to lock onto and focus on, and slap the Depth of Field 1/3 in-front 2/3 behind..... you can get dissociated back grounds, without huge apertures or monster amounts of 'zoom' .. focusing on 'nothing' at some distance in-front of your subject, and and placing them instead into the DoF zone behind the focus 'point' letting the back-ground 'drop oof' behind them that much sooner... But, digital cameras often don't have a focus scale, and if they do rarely have a DoF scale as well, and it's suggested we have to have more accurate focus systems, faster focusing systems, to compensate for the fact that essentially, the whole system is flawed, and we have as many anomalies of where AF 'fails' as we do where AE metering 'fails'.. and so folk 'take control' where they don't need to or where its less useful, in order to feel more 'involved' without actually utilizing that 'control' to any better effect.

For me... Widget is about 'convenience'; about LACK of 'faff'.. f I want to faff, I can play with film. So I will exploit as MUCH automation digital offers as I can, 'for convenience', and I'll turn it off, 'as appropriate', and that means AF as well as AE, or I may as well have saved my money and bought more film!
 
My serious photography is done with film cameras that have neither auto focus nor a built in meter. If I use a digital camera, I use aperture priority with manual focus lenses and make use of the exposure compensation dial. My choice of manual focus is because I miss focus less often than the camera does. Possibly I've only used "advanced" cameras that assume that the object you want in focus will be placed where the camera maker thinks it should be. At any rate, I found I was fighting the camera more often than not. I suppose that this could be down to laziness on my part in not investigating the algorithms used, and setting focus points; but honestly, I prefer to compose and expose not aim the camera to focus, then depress something to lock focus, recompose and then expose. I can focus quicker than that. I think that this is the equivalent of what used to be called "subject failure" in the days when built in meters got the exposure wrong, but the makers couldn't countenance the idea of "meter failure".

In the bad old days, lenses had depth of field scales, and street photography was very easy in that you set the aperture and focus distance to an appropriate setting that covered most things, and you were ready for a grab shot, and making a small adjustment was simple. Nowadays modern equipment doesn't give us that simple option. One of the reasons I use film cameras is that, for me, the whole process is both simpler and faster. But my subjects may not be your subjects, and my methods/approach may not be yours.
 
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For street photography, I tend to go full manual to avoid delays while the camera figures out what to do. Set to f11 for best depth of field, manual focus the 23mm lens so that any subject from six feet to infinity is in focus, meter from my hand to get the shutter over 1/250sec with whatever ISO that leaves me with. If I make sure my subjects are in the same light my hand was and over six feet away, all I have to do is press the shutter release. I periodically check the settings if it's a "changeable light" kind of day.

Landscapes are fully manual because control. Studio stuff, the same.

Everyday "wandering" is generally aperture priority with a min shutter speed of 1/250 and auto-ISO. If I want to capture motion, I drop back to manual.

It really helps that the X-T1 has aperture, shutter and ISO all on separate dials that you can see. No menus to hunt through. I went on a photo day out with some college people recently and over half didn't know how to change the settings on their camera as they were buried in menus. So many people stood there pressing buttons on their camera rather than noticing the surroundings. I'm not surprised auto is used so much when even entry level DSLRs can be so complicated for a dabbler.
 
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When I first got into photography, I was casually just using my phone to capture the "moment" (I say moment, I meant whatever is infront of me !), I saved up to buy a compact camera (Panasonic Lumix TZ60). I quite like its 30x zoom which has helped me a lot. Since then I've purchased a Nikon D5500. Whenever I go out shooting buses, its always in the day so I use the Lumix in auto mode. It's never really failed me and the photos are easily usable. The zoom allows me to get shots of a buses inside a garage without really trespassing and causing any problems. Whenever I feel creative however, I pull out the D5500. A DSLR is a really good tool for allowing you to experiment with photography and since then I've improved vastly. I still use Lumix for buses (I'd need a 500mm + lens on Nikon plus a lot of £££ otherwise) but everything else the D5500 is my tool. I find the shallow depth of field effect works better when you use manual focus instead of auto. The priority modes are great stepping stones to getting into manual.

1 thing I will note on auto is the stigma associated with using it. When I first got into photography, I watched many videos in order to educate myself further on the art. 1 thing I noticed was many people stating to get out of auto mode. Popular Youtubers such as Jared Polin seem to preach this. I have nothing against them if anything I quite his videos but I can't really discount using auto mode especially when your getting into it. I fail to see how many of my bus photos would have came out clear if I increased the ISO (etc....). If anything auto mode is great if you really want to focus on something like composition and not worry about anything else.
Having said all this, I do think for any photographer, they should learn the manual controls of a camera. A camera is capable of so much more than you just clicking its shutter button without a care. The level of control and the the artistry 1 can achieve is mind boggling. I genuinely don't regard myself to be a creative individual but I've been impressed with some of my photos I've taken of long exposures and what not. It's almost like owning a Ferrari and doing 20pmh in it ! I realize I might contradicting myself here but I'm essentially saying no harm in using auto mode.

1 thing I like about this forum is the maturity of the members to not really discount the usage of auto mode.
 
I didn't spend nearly £48,000 on photographic equipment, including lenses, countless bodies, filters, lighting, stands, tripods, accessories, flash triggers, reflectors studio equipment and software. I didn't. So I have to use the camera in my mobile phone instead. It takes great pictures!
 
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The usefulness of the various camera auto modes is always improving, and it seems to be improving faster than I learn. For example I learned a lot about digital camera higher ISO noise and how to reduce it by using careful manual control of sophisticated noise reduction programs on a rather noisy DSLR, the Sony A350. When I started using a Sony A77 I kept being surprised by how much better the camera could handle higher ISO noise on its own. I was also startled to discover the new feature for reducing noise of multiple shot noise reduction, where the camera splits a required long exposure into several shorter ones which it then averages to reduce noise, coping with slight misalignments between images so I could hand hold instead of using a tripod.

When I get a new camera I work through the whole manual a few times with camera in hand. I often also buy a guide book which goes into the detail of the camera's operations more deeply than the maker's manual. Even so, sometimes I still find myself standing beside someone with the same camera who takes an obviously much better shot than I managed in difficult conditions. Turns out they were using features of the camera that I'd forgotten about, or hadn't realised could be used in that way.

Having learned my camera craft way back in the old days of hand held light meters and before auto focus had been invented, I'm quite happy using totally manual control, and still use some totally manual lenses. It's quite a struggle to teach myself how good some of the latest auto features are, and to use them when they're going to do better than I could manage manually, especially when time is limited and fast reactions are required.
 
Professor1991 said:
I still use Lumix for buses (I'd need a 500mm + lens on Nikon plus a lot of £££ otherwise)
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Eh? Comment confuses me. Buses tend to be rather big.. I would have thought you would have wanted an UWA to cram one into the frame, not a telescope! However...
Professor1991 said:
When I first got into photography, I was casually just using my phone to capture the "moment"
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I was given a rather good 35mm Compact, when I was 10, to take 'Holiday Snaps' in a similar way. Advice I shall offer is NEVER forget why you picked up a camera in the first place, and revere the snap shot; they often contain far more interest in their 'purity' and lack of pretense than photo cliche's churned out as exercises in 'the art' that frequently lack any interest to any-one and are merely source of criticism for folk 'in' to assessing 'sharpness' and the like.
Professor1991 said:
Having said all this, I do think for any photographer, they should learn the manual controls of a camera. A camera is capable of so much more than you just clicking its shutter button without a care.
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It's a question of appropriateness.
Do they need to? Do they want to? Would it actually 'Help' or hinder them?
For example, my old mum; she's a horticultural teacher; when she's not pricking out seedlings or potting geraniums in the class-room, she's visiting stately homes and looking at the flower beds; driving every-one crazy talking latin, telling every one what the plants are.
I have a photo of a purple daisy somewhere.. well that's what it looks like to me, anyway; discovered half way up a cliff, chasng my kids about on holiday, she HAD to have a photo of to show her class.
You can tell how much interest I have in purple daisy's with fancy latin names, and other things that have petals. Despite how much my mother has tried to 'educate me' about them... often half way up a cliff, chasing my kids on a day trip or holiday... I have never found the interest or enthusiasm, I am afraid. But then, similarly, SHE has never really found much interest in photography, and other than pointing at stuff like that purple daisy, and saying "Get me a picture of that!" has never wanted to.
Wandering about with a compact Point and Press, and getting the film developed in boots, has always been 'enough' for her; and beyond telling her that she MUST press the little button with a flower on it, to get up close and take a photo of a flower! So as to get it in focus, that REALLY is about as much 'learning' on the subject as she has ever been able to absorb.. and she's forgotten even that, often enough! Can tell you the full latin name of a variegated holly bush, or the breeding origins of a black tulip, as well as how much water they need and ideal room temperatures and soil conditions, and how much peat, sand and mud to mix for them etc etc etc; she could probably name seventy two different verities of common a garden lawn grass, AND how to stip and service a petrol lawn mower to cut it!
But cameras? Just take pretty pictures dont they? Talking f-stops or ISO settings to her would be as greek to her as her giving me the botanical names of the weeds in my front garden!
She has a camera that is far more capable than she will ever exploit in the slightest, which she cold do a lot more with IF she had that extra know how, and bothered to read the user manual of mess with the menu's.... but at the end of the day, she's taking photo's.. I fail to find much interest in them, but then she probably doesn't find my photo's of old motorbikes all that interesting; but her potty-shed friends, colleagues and students (I hope!) find them interesting, and they don't care one iota that they aren't as 'sharp' as perhaps they could be, or that the colours aren't as saturated or vibrant as the ones in the magazines, or that they are a little blurry or he back-ground messy.... her photo' have an audience that like to look at them; who appreciate them, and just don't care about the photographic dexterity she displays... so does it really matter THAT much?
Photo's are being taken, and being enjoyed, does it matter that neither the photographer nor the viewers know an f-stop from a bus-stop?
 
Teflon-Mike said:
Eh? Comment confuses me. Buses tend to be rather big.. I would have thought you would have wanted an UWA to cram one into the frame, not a telescope! However...
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I would have thought it was obvious. If you are afraid of buses, or, more importantly, they are afraid of you, then you can sit in your hide, with a 500mm lens, in the high street, and wait till one comes out to feed.
 
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I use the Lumix TZ60 for buses because especially when I visit garages due to trespassing, I can't get too close so having a camera with good optical zoom helps. The photos are easily usable. Plus I find it easier on the legs to sit down in 1 spot and zoom in ;)
 
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