Chris Malcolm writes:

In rec.photo.digital.slr-systems David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
Chris Malcolm writes:
In rec.photo.digital Trevor wrote:
"David Dyer-Bennet" wrote in message
...

Personally I don't have a problem shooting 90% of the time in full
manual,
but many do it seems, since it requires a little knowledge of what all
the
options mean :-)

That's not, generally, the reason. Though I'm sure sometimes it is.

The reason is often that it slows you down. If you're shooting
fast-moving action in unstable light, it can slow you down
significantly -- depending on how "fast-moving" the action is, even
devestatingly.

I find the opposite just as often. Trying to set overides every time I move
the camera even if the light hasn't changed, simply because there is more
backlight, or some other reason the camera gets it wrong.

Why not simply hit the exposure lock button when it gets it right or
you've adjusted the compensation to get it where you want it? Then
you can move the viewpoint as much as you like without changing
exposure.

Lack of fingers. And I don't know if it even works right -- what
happens if I change the exposure compensation while holding exposure
lock?

Never thought to try that ... (fiddle fiddle) ... Wow! It works really
cleverly! The exposure lock (I've set it to toggle) locks it at
whatever the exposure was at that moment. Under the image in the
viewfinder is a range of + & - exposure values with an arrow over the
middle (0) in plan vanilla autoexposure mode. On activating exposure
lock the arrow and scale is immediaely locked, and a seond arrow
appears which tracks how much the actual exposure value has now
deviated from the locked value.

Exposure comepnsation still works, and adjusts the value of locked
exposure setting appropriately. So I can lock exposure, still see
where the real exposure level has moved to, and can indepedently
adjust the locked value without unlocking it to auto. Very useful
intelligent implenentation!

Thanks for raising that question! I've only had this new camera for a
few weeks. It takes me at least six months to discover most of the
useful features of a new camera. Plus maybe another year to discover
that a few of the silly features I never bothered to try are actually
very useful in certain special circumstances.

No idea how it works on mine, since I never use AEL myself.

(And I'm using that finger, which is my thumb, to control the AF,
it's not available for AEL.)

Again may depend on your camera, but in order not to use up any of my
digits holding buttons down I have set my buttons to toggle. Means I
can adjust lots of things without taking my eye off the
viewfinder. And I've set my default autofocus to drop into manual
focus once it's found focus, so I don't need to press anything to
start fine tuning with manual focus if I want. In fact some of the
latest lenses drop into manual focus as soon as you move the focus
ring on the barrel anyway, but this works with any AF lens.

I've avoided the toggle settings because it's nearly certain I'd have it
backwards a lot of the time, thus ruining evyerything I shot.

Plus I really benefit from controlling the AF in real-time. I set my
camera to continuous AF, but controlled only by the back AF-ON button,
NOT by the shutter release. So I can get continuous AF up until the
instant I want to stop, by modulating my thumb on the button. My lenses
will mostly let turning the focus ring overide the AF, but I wish I
could turn that off, I consider it largely a bug. It means if I bump
it, I could disturb the focus and means I have to be much more careful
how I hold the lens.

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