Reply To: very unhappy.

[cameraclicker]

We have not looked at 4 CD’s or DVD’s worth of images.  The ones at the link look reasonably in focus, although some look like post processing blur was added.  Facebook is not the place to judge the finer points of image quality.  Most digital cameras have a low pass filter over the sensor.  Even if focus is perfect, the images do not appear that sharp until sharpening has been applied during post processing.  Post processing can take a fair image and make it look good.  It can take a good image and make it look great.  Of course, if not done well, it can take a good image and make it look bad.  The same page has some children’s images and another wedding.  They don’t inspire me but they are not offensive either.  If you got the original images, see if you can find a good retoucher to edit the ones you like best.

Letting the camera do most of the work sounds good to me.  I let my cameras do a lot of the work too.  Cameras have a lot of manual options:  manual exposure, manual flash, manual focus.  They also have a lot of automated functions, and you can mix and match.  Auto-focus can focus faster and more accurately than I can at least 99% of the time, so I use auto-focus a lot.  I use manual focus for macro work and when I am shooting through and the auto-focus is confused by the nearer objects.  The rest of the time auto-focus can do a better job than I can so I configure it and let it do its thing.

Manual exposure is a similar sort of thing.  I use it mostly when using flash, or when I know I want something the camera’s metering was not designed to provide.  The rest of the time, I mostly use aperture priority and just set the aperture and ISO.  Shutter speed can take care of itself.  I can see shutter speed in the viewfinder so if it is way off where I think it should be, I take control, otherwise I let the camera do it.  If you shoot manual exposure and just zero the meter every shot, you might as well let the camera do it, because it can do it faster than you can.  Save manual mode for the shots that need it.

Manual flash is similar too.  When driving studio strobes, manual prevents the pre-flash from triggering the strobes.  But, when doing a single on camera flash image, ETTL is just fine, the camera can work out the details.

In summary, manual mode has its place but the more automated modes are also very good and offer a lot of adjustment possibilities through exposure compensation and flash compensation, so anyone who only shoots in manual mode is wasting the potential provided by carrying around a camera with as much computing power as a notebook computer and is working harder than necessary.