| > You might not trust auto, but don't you trust the previous manual setting even less? It could have been under completely different lighting conditions. Usually it'll be in similar lighting conditions because I shoot with my camera pretty continuously. > Suppose you are up in a high desert. At night, you take pictures of blossoms by starlight. The next day at noon, you spot an interesting and rare bird of prey quickly flying by while holding an interesting prey item. Quickly you flip the camera on and take a photo. Oh bummer, the camera was still configured for starlight, and you'll probably never have another opportunity for a similar photo. All pixels are white. This is unlikely to happen because I tend to shoot with my camera continuously. I'd have taken a photo of an interesting cactus long before I saw the bird. That said, assuming I already had a super telephoto lens attached to the camera (which is the bigger problem, if I was shooting blossoms I probably wouldn't have the right lens attached), it'd take me less than a second to move the relevant dials on the Fuji to something acceptable. On the Sony that's not possible but that's just a sacrifice I make by shooting Sony. And in this situation, I'd expect the auto settings to do something stupid like expose for the sky instead of the bird. For example the camera might choose low ISO, wide aperture, relatively slow shutter speed while I'd want max shutter speed, moderate ISO and whatever aperture works with the other two. > Why can't you lock the aperture in place? The lenses just don't come with a locking mechanism for the aperture wheel. It has some little clicks but that's it. > Why do you need to lock something in place if there is a separate dial position for auto? (if not auto, isn't it locked?) The lock is a physical mechanism to stop the dial from turning accidentally while in your bag or something like that. Otherwise even if you put it in auto when you put it away, a bit of jostling in its bag can turn the dial to a different setting, which can be an issue when auto is usually between the extremes. |