Is getting maximum OoF areas/bokeh the reason people overwhelmingly prefer aperture priority bodies?

Ko.Fe. said:

To be honest, I'm not aware of cameras with only aperture priority. Sounds like something wierd.
Wait. I had Oly XA. But it is not camera for this sub-forum.

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My Zeiss Ikon ZM is that way (aperture priority without shutter priority) which suits me.

film_man said:

I still don't know why this discussion is needed. The only mode you need is P, it is in the name: P for Pro. Done. Shutter is one letter away from the toilet, A is for apoplectic results and M is for monochrome, you're only supposed to use it with TriX.

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Is that you Mr Rockwell?

After reading this thread, I can only conclude you have all been the victims of a massive exercise in Trolling. Well Done, Helge.

Personally, I learned a very long time ago that you have three knobs when taking photographs, one of which is broken if you're using film. Aperture + shutter = ISO (sorta-- well, not really). You want to control depth-of-field? Alter the aperture. You want to control motion? Set the shutter speed. Is that not enough light? Raise the ISO. Or change film.

Bokeh, which can mean "blur", "haze" or "a bit thick", is a property of a huge number of factors, from lens design, iris design, aperture, sensor/film size, focal length-- there is no dial on any of my cameras for "bokeh". There is a slider on my cell phone, but I try to pretend it isn't there.

While some lenses are much sharper stopped down, that doesn't mean a 50mm f/1.2 or f/1.4 lens from the 70's won't work just fine wide open-- so the idea I saw that there are only 3 "usable" stops struck me as a bit odd. Then again, none of my large format lenses go wider than f/5.6, and I shoot f/11 or less when possible with them.

I primarily shoot landscape or macro-- to me, depth of field is important. If I shot action, I would worry about shutter speed. I suspect most people, even when shooting manual, have a "priority" in choosing their aperture and shutter speed-- And again, there are enough variables, that claiming people simply whack the aperture as far open as it will go for bokeh, is about as good as claiming that the only type of camera anyone needs is on their smartphone.

jawarden said:

My Zeiss Ikon ZM is that way (aperture priority without shutter priority) which suits me.

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And so are Bessa R_A series. But they are rangefinders, not just 35 mm cameras .

Ko.Fe. said:

I have AV, TV, Auto and M EOS 300. And I have EM, Nikormat measuring light. I had FG-20, OM10, FTb, Kiev 19. Same thing, just a lightmeter.
To be honest, I'm not aware of cameras with only aperture priority. Sounds like something wierd.
Wait. I had Oly XA. But it is not camera for this sub-forum.

Click to expand...

There are a lot of older 35mm SLRs from roughly the late 1970s - early 1980s that have aperture priority only and not manual exposure. You named a couple. For example:
Nikon EM
Canon AV-1
Pentax ME (not ME super)
Olympus OM-10 without the adapter
Yashica FR II
Contax 137 MD

Plus some very common fixed-lens rangefinders like the Yashica Electro 35. For the SLRs, it was a way for manufacturers to provide an auto mode camera that would give good results for the amateur who didn't want to fiddle with exposure, while not needing to retrofit camera control of the lens aperture. Av-only SLRs were usually regarded as entry-level since they didn't have manual. As makers added camera control of the aperture and electronics got more sophisticated, they started to implement Program mode instead for entry level cameras. and Av-only mostly died out.

grat said:

After reading this thread, I can only conclude you have all been the victims of a massive exercise in Trolling. Well Done, Helge.

Personally, I learned a very long time ago that you have three knobs when taking photographs, one of which is broken if you're using film. Aperture + shutter = ISO (sorta-- well, not really). You want to control depth-of-field? Alter the aperture. You want to control motion? Set the shutter speed. Is that not enough light? Raise the ISO. Or change film.

Bokeh, which can mean "blur", "haze" or "a bit thick", is a property of a huge number of factors, from lens design, iris design, aperture, sensor/film size, focal length-- there is no dial on any of my cameras for "bokeh". There is a slider on my cell phone, but I try to pretend it isn't there.

While some lenses are much sharper stopped down, that doesn't mean a 50mm f/1.2 or f/1.4 lens from the 70's won't work just fine wide open-- so the idea I saw that there are only 3 "usable" stops struck me as a bit odd. Then again, none of my large format lenses go wider than f/5.6, and I shoot f/11 or less when possible with them.

I primarily shoot landscape or macro-- to me, depth of field is important. If I shot action, I would worry about shutter speed. I suspect most people, even when shooting manual, have a "priority" in choosing their aperture and shutter speed-- And again, there are enough variables, that claiming people simply whack the aperture as far open as it will go for bokeh, is about as good as claiming that the only type of camera anyone needs is on their smartphone.

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Who has time for that‽ Hell no.

momus said:

Of course, Futurism is a quite past philosophy :] Way, way past, as in over 100 years ago. The cubist movement was from a similar time period, and while I love many of the great cubist paintings and sculptures, I have no desire to paint anything in a cubist style. Photography shares little w/ painting, sculpture, or most art movements (other than a brief flirtation w/ surrealism and dadaism).

People usually buy fast lenses so they can shoot them wide open for portraits. For that, you need a soft, non distracting background for your subject and an ability to have sharp focus on the eyes while keeping the rest of the face a little soft.

Generally, fast lenses are expensive and considered "pro" lenses because they're very well corrected and made w/ superior optical glass and coatings. So even if someone doesn't shoot portraits, a fast lens is nearly always a better tool. You can always stop a fast lens down for more sharpness, but you can't open a slower lens aperture to a fast setting that it doesn't have. What all this has to do w/ aperture priority, I don't know.

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Of course I didn’t mean exact replication of futurism.
I merely meant the acknowledgment of movement (like Futurists did, quite possibly inspired by photography itself) in photos. Something which nowadays seems to be mostly seen as a nuisance, or something for the very occasional effect.
But of course that was merely a tangential sub point.

It would be quite amusing to see how photographic cubism would be achieved. Perhaps something like slit scan, only not with a slit.

For “boring” formal portrait portraits, aperture priority is good of course. But for most other things, having your lens permanently locked into and moss covered in one aperture is anathema to “real” photography.

From the days of my first adjustable 35mm camera (Argus brick), my preference has been toward aperture priority. I always previewed the scene in my mind, determined what was important, and used the preferred aperture to achieve those results. Even when shooting "action", I learned to use the desired aperture, or reasonably close to it, and then set the shutter speed. Over time, most photographers put the triangle together mentally. Do they do it consciously? Probably, but they also do in much the same you can solve equations without the benefit of pencil and paper. You just know it. In the 80's this knowledge (data) gained the label "soft" as opposed to hard data.

I still set my Nikon F4 and F5 to aperture priority, and on the strictly manual cameras, I usually set the aperture somewhere between f/8 and f/16, unless the metering requires something above or below. I also learned at a very early time, that lenses had minimum apertures that were the sweet spot. No 35mm camera I ever used gave outstanding performance @ f/32. There's a maxim that the "prime spot" for a lens is two stops down from minimum. Good to keep in mind.

reddesert said:

There are a lot of older 35mm SLRs from roughly the late 1970s - early 1980s that have aperture priority only and not manual exposure. You named a couple. For example:
Nikon EM
Canon AV-1
Pentax ME (not ME super)
Olympus OM-10 without the adapter
Yashica FR II
Contax 137 MD

Plus some very common fixed-lens rangefinders like the Yashica Electro 35. For the SLRs, it was a way for manufacturers to provide an auto mode camera that would give good results for the amateur who didn't want to fiddle with exposure, while not needing to retrofit camera control of the lens aperture. Av-only SLRs were usually regarded as entry-level since they didn't have manual. As makers added camera control of the aperture and electronics got more sophisticated, they started to implement Program mode instead for entry level cameras. and Av-only mostly died out.

Click to expand...

Interesting. In OM-10 and EM I only watched, checking shutter speed and control of it is just called as the aperture ring