Confused by my photography class

argyle wrote in post #9873910
That's the guy that killed his pregnant wife and dumped her in a bay. You mean now he's written a book too?

OMG I meant Bryan Peterson's Understanding Exposure. <Color me embarrassed!>

TheMaggedy wrote in post #9871087
Is there a "right" approach? IIRC, doesn't Scott Peterson's book say to put your camera in M and leave it there (I haven't read the whole thing so I may be wrong).

I don't think BRYAN Peterson's book Understanding Exposure, says to put your camera in Manual mode and leave it. It just says he uses Manual mode. His book was originally written in 1991, and the camera he used at the time may have only had Manual mode. Similarly my Pentax K1000 only has manual mode and centerweighted averaging metering, but also have a huge viewfinder not found in today's SLRs.

You can use Av most of the time if you want. M mode is good for tricky lighting situations that the camera would get fooled at or when colors that need exposure compensation from a middle meter reading dominate the scene.

Lots of good advice here. No one thing is best. Having the knowledge to know (or best guess) how to shoot a subject is real important. If you have the time it would seem that a quick check of the histogram would tell you if you've blown out anything or under exposed too much. This digital age has given photographers a bunch of really great tools to use.

I use Av 85% of the time. The other 15% is flash photography where I always use M. Doing environmental photography, where the light and subject constantly changes, Av provides a more sensible solution, giving you both control and speed, as opposed to having to dial changes manually (which i always forget). And since I'm using the body's metering system anyway, why bother dialing shutter speed manually when the body can do that for me.

For a while I always shot in manual, but I found that I was just adjusting the settings to make the light meter in the camera show a middle of the line exposure. I would pick an aperture and an ISO and then I would adjust the shutter until the camera light meter thought the shot was going to be properly exposed.

Once I realized what I was doing, I switched to Aperture Priority mode for most things and I use exposure compensation if I think the camera's light meter is wrong.

One exception where I still go back into manual is if I am shooting roller derby. Usually the track has fairly consistent lighting at all points but there are some small differences in the ambient light around me at different spots that seem to really throw off the meter. Or if one of the teams is wearing black uniforms and my camera meters of the black, I end up with a terrible exposure. So in those cases I will switch back to manual and just leave it on a certain setting.

Dragos Jianu wrote in post #9880357
And since I'm using the body's metering system anyway, why bother dialing shutter speed manually when the body can do that for me.

Yep, that was me exactly. I was dialing the shutter speed myself only to match what the camera would have done if I just put the thing in Av mode to start with.