I guess you've never shot a fast paced wedding, sports, fast changing light scenes................you over simplify profoundly! And yet there are thousands, no millions of pros world wide that use those "useless gimmicks" features and would prove you wrong.
I shoot an average of two weddings (about 800 - 1,000 pix) a month, and I never even so much as glance at my in-camera light meter or LCD, nor do I use anything but M mode, one shot AF with the center point only, and the AF command moved to the AE lock button. I get the thing as close to an old F1 as is possible,
because anything else leads to worse results. I learned on fully manual film cameras, and there is absolutely no difference in working methods when using digital and/or electronic cameras. I used to shoot sports four to five games a week on average. Again, same settings, a bit more AF for action shots (single point often moved off center, and sometimes AI servo mode). However, the best of the best sports shots are not even action shots. They are simply feature, news, or fine art shots. You have to shoot some action at every sporting event, but 80% of the time you spend shooting other things, which you can do perfectly well without any fancy features, if you know what the #@$& you are doing. No auto point selection, no TTL metering, not AI servo, no nothing. Knowing what the #@$& you are doing goes a long way. If you do, you will find that automatic features just give you worse results.
Where did I learn that shooting this way was the way that leads to the best results? From PROS; working, experienced, news and sports journalists, who had to be technically perfect, because they were in a rush and using film. Real PROS, not just pros. There are "pros", and then there are "PROS". Pros, meaning those who simply make money with photography, use the gimmicks to carry them through. PROS, meaning those who really know what the #@$& they are doing with photography, AND make money at it, do not. It is the difference between a local newspaper hack, who just gets his/her shots good enough to make a living, and an SI staffer, who is a monster artist
and technician. They
use whatever features they want to use, but
rely on nothing,
need nothing from their cameras but for the cameras to simply do what they tell the cameras to do. You will find far more pros than PROS. Don't let what the pros do make an impression on you. Just because they make money does mean mean that they know what they are doing on a technical level.
All these features were invented to open high-quality photography to more people, people not as skilled as others. Ask any photo editor who used to work with film and manual cameras, and they will let you know in no uncertain terms that the quality of photographers has gone down as the number of automatic features on cameras has gone up. They will tell you the following: That all the features have done is to make it easier to get passable results from someone who doesn't really know what they are doing. If you need all this stuff to get what you need, then use it...but don't tell us that we need it just because you do.
