MrBob wrote:
Sounds like the best advice yet... Ego would be not willing to see what the camera says...
It is a good working strategy. You can copy the settings from the automatic exposure to your camera's controls, then proceed manually. Or, you can "chimp" the image on the screen or in the EVF, review the histogram, and apply exposure compensation. Or, you can dream up some other variation on this theme.
There is no one best strategy for every situation. It's best to practice several, so you know when to do what. Automation does not automatically imply lack of control, if you monitor and control what the automation is doing. But blindly setting a camera on Auto or Program and exposing indiscriminately is risky. It abdicates responsibility for results, and CAN lead to inferior results.
That said, modern automation is a marvel of ingenuity. It is remarkably good about 80 to 90 percent of the time. It's the other 10% to 20% that you have to worry about.
Here are three scenes where automation nearly always fails, especially when processing JPEGs in the camera:
Black cat sitting on coal in a coal bin (will be very overexposed in most auto modes)
Scandinavian blonde bride in white wedding dress against a white curtain (will be very underexposed in most auto modes)
Red headed Irish lass in red dress, standing against red curtain (red will come out dull or grayish, and face shifts to cyan, when using Automatic White Balance)
When I ran the digital side of a pro lab, we saw these sorts of errors coming in the door, all day long, every day. That was back in 2000 to 2005, when pro portrait photographers were just shifting from film capture to digital capture. The lab had been very good at fixing most errors in color *negative film* exposure. But JPEGs are like *slide film...* What you put on slide film at the camera is what you get! What you expose for and bake into a JPEG at the camera is what you get! And there is very little latitude to fix it without noticeable quality deterioration. Burn out the highlights, or plug up the shadows, and nothing can get them back.
My favorite was from an older pro who took his brand new digital camera to a college graduation to photograph 250 college seniors getting their diplomas. The graduates and the faculty were all wearing black caps and black gowns. The podium was black with a gold school seal. The diploma covers were black. The curtains behind the faculty sitting on stage were black (and 50 feet back from the subjects). Essentially, everything in the scene, except hands and faces, was black (in reality)!
The photographer set his camera on Program Auto, Set his flash to full ETTL auto, and guess what happened? EVERY student was grossly overexposed by at least two stops. The college president and presenter and students were portrayed in milky gray robes, with white ovals where their faces should have been. Only the middle row of the faculty, seated about 40 feet from the camera, was correctly exposed. And of course, the photographer captured only JPEGs (Pro photo labs generally NEVER accept raw images, to this day).
The poor guy had to refund the school's $1000 deposit, AND he had to pay a non-performance penalty of $1000 that was written into his contract by the school's attorney. The photographer hired an attorney, to see if they could sue us, but when they confronted us, I explained what happened and demonstrated the problem. They backed off. The guy became a dedicated customer after that, and we opened up a dialog that lasted several years, until he retired.
The concept of Pareto's Optimality applies as much in photography as in economics. 80% of your work takes 20% of your effort. The other 20% takes 80% of your effort. You can reduce your overall effort tremendously by learning your craft inside out, upside down, forwards, backwards, and sideways.