Well I guess it's time to admit that in respect to the way I use my camera, I'm a dinosaur.

I started my SLR journey in the early 1960's with a Ricoh Five-One-Nine Rangefinder and after about ten years moved to a Canon AV-1, mainly for the selection of lens available, and used it until the end of the last millennium.

The AV-1 had a built-in Exposure/Camera Shake Warning Meter, very handy for getting you into the ballpark for your settings. You still had to have an understanding of the 'Sunny Sixteen Rule' if you didn't want to pay for thirty-six blurry/dark/washed out 6" x 4" prints.

I had a hiatus from photography for about seven years until I purchased a 7.1 Megapixel Canon A550 Powershot P&S in 2007. What a great intro to the digital age with it's scene modes, and the ability to instantly review your shot, and if you'd got it wrong, take another one. No more waiting for a day or so to find out that you'd stuffed up a roll of film.

This excellent little camera, I still use it, rekindled my interest in photography, but I missed the creativity that comes with the ability to set aperture and shutter speeds, so I did heaps of research and decided on a DSLR, the Pentax K20D.

I sat down with the 300 odd page manual, got to the end of the section describing what all the buttons, knobs and wheels were for and wondered just what I was going to learn from the other 300 pages that would allow me to start taking photos.

I made a decision to try to demystify the process of taking a photo by looking at just what the difference was between a SLR and a DSLR. They both offered variable aperture and shutter speed control, however the big difference was that the DSLR also offered in-camera ISO control instead of having to change the film in a SLR to a higher ASA rating when the light was less than ideal.

So my new you-beaut DSLR was just the same as my old Canon AV-1, except that I could make an in-camera adjustment for deteriorating light. I always shoot in RAW and disable all in-camera processing, preferring CS6 instead, so if I miss the light by a stop it is usually recoverable in PP.

OK, there are some great features that I also use, like back-button and live-view focusing, and focus tracking etc. Although I never use them I concur that there are times when Aperture and Shutter Priority are useful.

This thread made me think about the way I use my camera. http://www.ausphotography.net.au/for...n-ISO-question

I made the following comment in the thread and I'll stick by it.
Using Auto ISO is, to my way of thinking, surrendering a degree of control of the exposure equation to the whim of the camera's in-built processor.
I guess my bottom line is that when you let the camera's processor start making fine adjustments for you, you really are handing control to a program that is trying to be all things to all people.