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Comment by zalew | Hacker News Reader

> No P (program) mode. This is actually the most useful shooting mode on many DSLRs, especially for novices. It lets you trade off aperture vs. shutter speed.

oh boy. that's actually the mode that keep novices clueless about what's going on with the settings.

> No auto ISO mode, No ISO-priority mode, etc. etc.

well, ISO + TIME + APERTURE are ingredients of EXPOSURE, and that should be all you need to know to start shooting. you know this and you can grab the newest high-end dslr or your grandpa's 35mm oldie and know what you're doing. the rest is just geekery.

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> oh boy. that's actually the mode that keep novices clueless about what's going on with the settings.

That's hardly the fault of the mode itself — it's just a large number of SLR-buying consumers probably didn't need the complexity (or heft) of an SLR, but have the misconception that an SLR will outperform a compact or bridge camera 100% of the time. And so they buy one.

The issue there is that a lot of these people are coming from mid-range compacts a couple of years old, and see the SLR as the next logical step. A high-end compact (S95, LX5, XZ-1) or a good bridge/micro four-thirds camera (GF1/2, E-PL2, GH2) would be a far more practical solution, and nigh-indistiguishable until ISO1600 anyway.

As a side-note, I went from shooting portraits w/ a 5D2 + primes to a GF1 + 20mm f1.7, since I no longer had the time to keep the portrait gig up as a consultant. My GF1 is no full-frame SLR, but it's very close to the entry-level SLR's and in a much smaller package (with better glass to boot).

> oh boy. that's actually the mode that keep novices clueless about what's going on with the settings.

Of course. Criticizing it for not having Program mode stuck me as similar to saying "Nice sportscar, if only it had Automatic transmission". People buy high end DSLRs and don't take the time to learn what the various A-S-M-P modes do. It is the fault of the mode and the manufacturers who put P or Green modes on the SLRs, and recommend them as idiot proof modes.

I know how to use my SLR, I regularly use it in full manual tuning every last exposure variable in manual focus, sometimes with multiple manual flashes too.

Yet, I still try to remember to leave the camera in P when I put it away and often shoot in P. It's a relatively idiot proof mode; it's unlikely that, if I just pick up the camera and shoot because I'm in a hurry for whatever's in front of me, P will give me a ridiculous, unusable exposure.

The chances that you want to deliberately underexpose or overexpose your photo are lower than the chances that you want to specifically control aperture (for DoF) or shutter speed (depending on how you want to capture motion in your scene). It makes lots of sense to automatically set the ISO while you control the other parameters (while being aware of the quality loss inherent in high ISO, and keeping track of it).

>well, ISO + TIME + APERTURE are ingredients of EXPOSURE, and that should be all you need to know to start shooting. you know this and you can grab the newest high-end dslr or your grandpa's 35mm oldie and know what you're doing. the rest is just geekery.

Perhaps I misunderstood your point but that doesn't sound right. Iso does not control exposure: in case of film it is the sensitivity of a particular stock, and in case of sensors it's basically analog gain. Since to use a different ISO in a film camera you'd need to use a different roll or sheet of film, you can't vary ISO on a "grandpa's camera" very easily unlike with a digital camera.

You missed the point, which is that you learn how to use the 3 exposure controls: shutter speed, aperture, iso; and then it doesn't matter if you can change iso on the fly on digital or by changing a roll of film - you know how to take pictures and that's it. We're talking education.

The worst a newbie can do is to focus on learning 'camera modes' instead of learning how photography works - that's why all those "P", auto-iso, etc would be pointless when you want to learn (and that's what this simulator is for).

You don't actually understand program mode on a DSLR. It's actually like not having to switch from A to S rather than the old "I don't care what my camera does as long as my photo comes out" mode you get on point-and-shoots.

> well, ISO + TIME + APERTURE are ingredients of EXPOSURE, and that should be all you need to know to start shooting

So depth of field and the way metering actually works aren't important?

> > well, ISO + TIME + APERTURE are ingredients of EXPOSURE, and that should be all you need to know to start shooting

> So depth of field and the way metering actually works aren't important?

Well, we can say "everything is important" and there's no sense to number this stuff to infinity. But if you insist: metering is also just a tool, which you can live without (using exposure value tables), knowing how exposure works is the core of photography.

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