Cameras without aperture and shutter priority - any good?

I am planning on buying a 5 MPixel camera, priced around the US$400-450 mark. For good quality general pleasure photography use only - family, outdoor scenes, etc, nothing professional or fancy.

With only my film camera experience behind me, I tend to believe that one can't do without shutter priority and aperture priority. Too many situations come up when you have to fix one of these two parameters first and let the camera work out the other.

A few cameras recently announced seem pretty good. Some, e.g. Canon A95 has shutter and aperture priority. Many others (e.g. Casio Exilim Z50/Z55, Pentax S5i) don't. Instead, they provide lots of screen modes as substitute - landscape, kids, sports, portrait, pan focusing etc. Presumably these are preset to some aperture and shutter speed values that the manufacturer thought reasonable. I have not been able to find out what these preset values are.

I would like to ask camera users - how well do these screen modes cover all the different situations? Suppose I use their portrait mode and find that the background is not sufficiently diffused, are there other ways to get what I want? Am I likely to miss too much without proper aperture and shutter priority controls?

Regards - JW

John Wright wrote:

I am planning on buying a 5 MPixel camera, priced around the
US$400-450 mark. For good quality general pleasure photography use only
- family, outdoor scenes, etc, nothing professional or fancy.

With only my film camera experience behind me, I tend to believe that
one can't do without shutter priority and aperture priority. Too many
situations come up when you have to fix one of these two parameters
first and let the camera work out the other.

A few cameras recently announced seem pretty good. Some, e.g. Canon A95
has shutter and aperture priority. Many others (e.g. Casio Exilim
Z50/Z55, Pentax S5i) don't. Instead, they provide lots of screen modes
as substitute - landscape, kids, sports, portrait, pan focusing etc.
Presumably these are preset to some aperture and shutter speed values
that the manufacturer thought reasonable. I have not been able to find
out what these preset values are.

I would like to ask camera users - how well do these screen modes cover
all the different situations? Suppose I use their portrait mode and find
that the background is not sufficiently diffused, are there other ways
to get what I want? Am I likely to miss too much without proper aperture
and shutter priority controls?

Regards - JW


Kodak has several cameras with both features and 4-5mp within the stated
price range. I suspect that if Kodak does, others do as well, I am just
not as familiar with them as with the Kodak line. Most of the new
cameras 'auto' mode does a much better job of setting aperture and
shutter speed than most snapshot photographers, so the features aren't
really that much of a desirable thing. I have taken about 1200 shots
with my current camera since Feb. 2004 and have used the shutter and
aperture priority settings for 4 or 5 of them.
You can see several hundred of my shots on Webshots. Just look for
rphunter42 and go to the Alaskan Cruise pictures. All of these pictures
were shot in either 'auto' or 'landscape', or 'close up' with no manual
settings.

Typing error. Please read "scene mode", not "screen mode".
- JW.

"John Wright" wrote in message
... provide lots of screen modes ...

Regards - JW

Dear John,

I felt the same as you about buying a digital camera on a fairly low budget so I bought a Casio QV4000 and the controls on it are as comprehensive as any film SLR even down to manual settings, at the moment it's possible to buy the 5mp QV5700 version here in the UK for about £200 I guess there would be similar deals in the USA.

I can get reasonable 8 x 10's off it using an old Epson 4colour printer, people who are not photographers and who are unaware of the quality of 35mm to 8 x 10, are completely bowled over by the prints. In many ways it's better than film, you can see what you've got, the contrast range is greater and it's easier to use to use than an SLR.

J
"John Wright" wrote in message u...
I am planning on buying a 5 MPixel camera, priced around the US$400-450 mark. For good quality general pleasure photography use only - family, outdoor scenes, etc, nothing professional or fancy.

With only my film camera experience behind me, I tend to believe that one can't do without shutter priority and aperture priority. Too many situations come up when you have to fix one of these two parameters first and let the camera work out the other.

A few cameras recently announced seem pretty good. Some, e.g. Canon A95 has shutter and aperture priority. Many others (e.g. Casio Exilim Z50/Z55, Pentax S5i) don't. Instead, they provide lots of screen modes as substitute - landscape, kids, sports, portrait, pan focusing etc. Presumably these are preset to some aperture and shutter speed values that the manufacturer thought reasonable. I have not been able to find out what these preset values are.

I would like to ask camera users - how well do these screen modes cover all the different situations? Suppose I use their portrait mode and find that the background is not sufficiently diffused, are there other ways to get what I want? Am I likely to miss too much without proper aperture and shutter priority controls?

Regards - JW