Alright, guns and motorcycles! I have several of each. Anybody mention guitars yet? Guns, Motorcycles, and Guitars! And cameras of course! And Beer! Gotta have beer in there too!
Y'all will excuse me, I'm joining this discussion late. 7 pages and 155 messages so far. And here's my take on Program with a bit of my history tossed in. My apologies about the length; I do tend to go on.
I started out in a serious way in photography with a Canon AE-1. All I had exposure-automation wise was Shutter Priority. Shooting manual on that camera was a hassle because the meter did not indicate what aperture was selected on the lens, it indicated what it thought the aperture should be, based on the shutter speed selected. So, from the meter's standpoint there wasn't much difference between Shutter Priority and manual. About a year after I bought the AE-1, I bought an A-1. Why? Because it had a program mode, mostly. But also because it took a for-real motordrive, the MD MA. And when I first got it, that's how I used it -- in Program, that is -- but I also used SP quite a bit. I almost never used Aperture Priority, and I think the reason why not was partly the way you shot aperture priority on an A-1 and partly just plain ignorance.
But not long after I bought the A-1, I began to realize that my knowledge pertaining to photography had been stunted because all that automation was hiding the process from me. Also, I was shooting slides already back then and I'd frequently get slides where the exposure was off and it was because of the way the A-1 (or any A-series Canon I found out later) meters a scene. I began to notice the exposure was off in some slides because of the lighting and I could see how it had fooled the meter. Anyway, as I was starting to think that maybe, just maybe, what I needed was less automation, I read a short article by Jason Schneider in Modern Photography magazine on the Canon FTb. This was back in early 1984, as best as I can recall. I was immediately impressed by that old classic, the FTb. It had this wonderful capability that I had heretofore never heard of -- mirror lock up. But once I read the description, I decided I had to have it. So I searched in an expanding circle from where I lived at the time (Bakersfield, California), and found one down in Torrance (the LA area) at Silvio's Photoworks. So I set out on a little road trip, probably 120-130 miles or so. Ended up buying an FTbn and an FL 35mm f/2.5, which later became my favorite 35mm lens.
One of the very first things I discovered about the FTb was the way it meters a scene, and how it was vastly different from my A-series Canons. With the FTb, when you look through the viewfinder, you'll see a small, centrally located rectangle. About 12% of the image area. Metering occurs only within that 12% area rectangle. There could be a spotlight shining directly at the camera, but as long as it wasn't withing that 12% rectangle, it had no effect on the meter. I immediately began to see the advantage to this metering method. And my incorrectly exposed slides dropped to about zero, percentage wise. Any incorrectly exposed slides taken with the FTb were due entirely to operator error. Also, I immediately took to the metering tools used in that camera, specifically its match-needle metering. Simple, yet fool-proof. Not long after I bought the FTb, I learned that this other magnificent Canon that was no longer made, the original F-1, used the exact same metering method and metering tools. I decided I had to have one. But this time I wanted one not just for the meter, but because it was a system camera. I decided to attend the monthly show held in Buena Park, California, BIll Bagnall's Camera Expo, to see if I could locate a reasonably priced F-1 there. Well, I found one. In Texas parlance, it looked like it had been 'rode hard and put up wet' for most of its life. It was ugly, but everything worked. Best of all, it was only $150.
At that point, armed with my F-1 and FTb, I had exactly the type of exposure system I needed and wanted. All notions and memories of a Program mode were slowly slipping away into desuetude. Shortly after buying the F-1, because I had also bought a Sigma 600mm f/8 mirror, I changed out its focusing screen to a plain matte one. Because a typical focusing screen's focusing aids are useless with slow lenses like mirrors, I learned how to shoot accurately with a plain matte screen. And those have been my preferences ever since --- what is now called "partial area metering," the "match needle" method, and a plain matte screen. Almost all of the cameras I own now that take interchangeable focusing screens, have installed in them plain matte screens.
To this day, if a camera has Partial Area metering, that is the selection I use. Many can use a particular metering method with exposure automation, so with those cameras, I don't feel as if I'm losing anything when I shoot with the PA method and exposure automation. After I bought my first Nikon F3, I learned that its metering method differed from other Nikons at the time. Nikon had traditionally use a 60/40 method. You see a largish circle when you look through the viewfinder of one of those cameras. Take the FE or FM as examples. 60% of the metering occurs within that circle and 40% outside of it. This had been very useful, I found. But Nikon tightened things up a bit with the F3. It became an 80/20 arrangement on the F3. I can recall the first time I decided to use my F3 in Aperture Priority (the only auto setting on that camera). It was at an airshow, where sometimes exposure can be problematic. But all my slides came back perfectly exposed. So after that, I frequently used the F3 in AP. These days, film camera wise, I have only a few that offer partial area metering and a full Program mode: my Canon T90 and T70 and my Nikon F4 and N80. Do I use them in Program mode? Sometimes, yeah, I do. Since I know I can trust the way the scene is being metered, I can also comfortably rely on correct exposure when using a P setting on one of these cameras.
It all boils down to one thing when using Program mode: trust. If I trust a camera to expose a scene properly in Program mode, I have no problem with using that level of automation. Since the 80s -- with Canon at least -- one has had the option of more than one Program mode. Take the T90 for instance. It has a few different ones that are biased in certain ways depending on the way the camera is being used. Faster shutter speeds for sports, for example, greater depth of field (ie,, smaller aperture) for landscapes, etc. But you know what? I still prefer the manual mode and I still prefer match needle metering. Some of my cameras offer the equivalent to match needle with the use of LEDs in the viewfinder. That's fine, as long as they're doing the same thing, function-wise. As long as it gets me where I want to go, I don't care particularly how I got there.
Of course! Gotta have Bacon!
