The myth of shooting in manual mode

I've been doing photography for a long time, and whenever I've had a conversation with someone about it, one question I get asked frequently is “Do you shoot in manual mode?”, that's how people judge if you are a pro or not. Is this logical, yes, because if you are shooting in manual mode, you must have expert knowledge of photography.

Look at the other side now, people spend a lot of money on buying great cameras because of their capabilities, these cameras have been built to make the photographer's life easier by giving you so many features and optimized settings in them already. If you are still going to use manual mode, you are just wasting your money, you have spent so much money on your gear but still aren't willing to trust it. That is just being an egoist photographer and not a smart photographer.

Yes, there are a few scenarios where you have no option other than manual mode, but those come in rarely, 90% of the time, the camera can handle those scenarios.

My suggestion to aspiring photographers would be to, study light, study the exposure triangle, study your camera, learn which mode helps you in which scenario. Nevertheless, for studying and practice purposes you can use manual mode and understand how the exposure triangle works, but when you are out there, trust your camera, make the best use of what it provides.

Let me give you an example, I am a wildlife photographer, I spend time tracking different animals, the light keeps changing constantly, the surroundings keep changing, and wildlife is very unpredictable, any bird or animal can pop up at any place at any time so I need to be always ready, now imagine this, I am using manual mode and a come across a Tiger in very low light, now I have to spend time fixing up my settings in manual mode, by the time I am done with getting the right settings the Tiger might disappear and I would never be able to even get a shot, instead if I had used the Aperture mode on my camera, kept the minimum shutter speed to 1/200th of a second and kept the ISO on auto mode, I at least would've been able to get a decent shot out of it. The same goes with any other kind of photography, if you know your camera in and out, if you know its capabilities and its limitations, you can make the most out of it without worrying about manual settings. The important thing to remember is that your camera can make exposure calculations and adjustments faster than your brain and fingers, and in cases where every millisecond matters, this can be the difference between getting or missing the shot.

A great photograph does not depend on if you made the settings in manual mode or if the camera did the settings for you, a great photograph depends on the composition and the story behind it.