What mode do you use most?

[jaso1]

Av mode for me atm , have played with manual on various occasions and need to so some more with it .
I hate auto now as it is too inconsistant and that stupid little flash popping up does my head in lol .

AV is where it is at for vast majority of my shots though for sure .

[ashey]

I use Av when shooting birds, and manual for landscapes.

[Denis]

Aperture priority mostly, to be in control of DoF, bokeh and corner sharpness

[Nicalum]

Aperture Priority most of the time, Shutter Priority to freeze moving objects.
Still exploring the advantage of Manual Mode especially in Wedding Photography. No second chance here when we made a mistake.

[William]

Full manual !! , When out shooting the Quiksilver Pro last year all day I got lazy and on the bright sunny day I shot in Shutter Priority @ 1250th sec , The camera kept the aperture around F9, f11 which was good

[bowjac]

Program mode. A great feature of the D7000 is that I can easily tweak Program mode to emphasise shutter or aperture.

[photomike666]

Full manual, with manual focus. I want full control over the captured image.

[Kerrie]

Depends on what I'm shooting.

Av,tv and occasional manual now. P mode I have no idea even what it does yet.

Auto action if I must grab something fast moving at a moments notice.

[Papou]

What a Great read, Mostly maual for me except for certain Birding conditions...What works great for one may not necesarilly work great for someone else until they try out all the vatiouse Modes and play around with them ey..

[MALCEB]

It obviously depends on the situation but either Manual or Aperature

[mini696]

Often I will start off with a shot or two in program mode. I also leave the camera stored away in this mode just in case I pick it up and need to get off a quick shot without thinking about lighting etc.

After the first two shots I will switch to full manual or aperture priority, sometimes shutter priority, but it really depends on what I am shooting, and what I am trying to achieve.

[seastorm]

Aperture priority. I like to be able to control the DoF and bokeh.

[Val]

I clicked Shutter Speed on the poll as I like to photo a lot of birds in action. However, I also use Manual a lot of the time, when I'm not shooting movement.

[MaHo]

Started in manual mode, then moved to Av (and still for most), but now hitting up Tv when required (festivals and such).

Will most likely stay with Av as a primary - but I can see me moving back towards manual depending on the situation nowadays.

[rodw]

G'day all

Just been reading all the comments above with some interest - what a great set of views and advisory comments
I like Kym's up the front - "Mentally I shoot in two modes (P&S and Serious)." as that also describes a lot of what I do as well

For me ...
Way back in the dim dark ages (1960s) everything was manual, then came semi-auto [you set Aperture or Speed, it did the rest] and now lots of fully-auto -> all pretty amazing stuff
These days I float between 80% "Program" and 20% Aperture - the beauty of "P" for me is that I find on many, many occasions the metering system gives me an exposure combo very close to what I would have chosen anyway, but/and when it needs tweaking, then a qwik twist of the dial swings the aperture up/down to get what I'm after. No need to muck around, and in a qwik/tight/grab spot, the camera will always come up okay

Hope this is of interest to others
Regards, Phil

This quote on page 10 sums it up for me and I think explains why I am in the minority who use P most. For me the dim dark ages started in the early 80's with a manual SLR (before that it was a Kodak Instamatic!).

My next SLR only had aperture priority and manual modes. let's face it, if you can control aperture, you can control shutter speed. So after a short holiday using auto modes for snapshots, I moved to P as I could not do what I wanted. I find it is easy to move the thumb wheel to move either the shutter speed or the aperture the way I wanted. I am a great believer in using technology and as a casual photographer with lots of other interests, and when I learnt my third film SLR had a database of 30,000 scenes that were consulted to set the exposure, I figured I would be better off letting the camera to take over a few tasks and leave me to concentrate on other creative things. It did not take long for the camera proove it was better than me! Now I tend to use A and S modes where I want to control a specific feature and it is so easy to apply EC if required. I am really looking forward to getting my D800 which has two thumb wheels so I think it will work much like my F80 film camera and be much easier to use these sort of features.

[bleAf]

Most of the time I use aperture mode. Then there is the use of manual mode when I have time on my hand to frame, compose and get the exposure that I want.

[Geoff79]

Well I'd become a Manual enthusiast and used no other mode, but since my camera went for a swim I no longer get on-screen display which doesn't always suit my manual needs... so I have reverted back to Av for photos that I don't set up slowly for. I must admit, I do like Av and never realised before you could set the exposure. ... but But yeah, I do like it. I do still use Manual for a lot of slow shutter speed shots, but for the rest, Av is my friend.

[Snpsht]

As a newbie, it is almost all auto at the moment, as I have just had the Pentax a few days. With the info I am starting to get from this site, a few more experiments will definitely occur!

[Roddy]

Hey,

I'm shooting 95% of all the time in aperture priority mode.
And as I am a big fan of wider aperture lenses... I limited my auto ISO to 200-800.
With this setup I can shoot all my picture without tripod... even by sunset.

cu Roddy

[Duane Pipe]

User priority