Photography Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for professional, enthusiast and amateur photographers. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I am using D5100 for around 6 months. I have basic ins-and-outs understandings of the camera, including A/M/S-mode. In most scenarios, I understand what to use or else at least figure it by trial and error.
In many online discussions, I read that "P-Mode" (or, program mode) is something very useful. But, so far I can't understand its purpose or use.
So, my question is basically two.
The main difference is that many options are 'locked out' and set to their defaults in Full Auto (Auto) mode. The manual has all the info you'll need on what is available and when. In decreasing order of automation the modes are...
Do everything - leave only the most basic functions open to the photographer.
Like Full-Auto with preset values for the chosen conditions.
Unlike the auto/scene mode many settings are user controlled in the P/S/A modes such as...
Also, advanced options (i.e. bracketing, HDR, Active D-Lighting, multiple exposures) are also available. In P-mode where shutter/aperture is calculated for you, the dials allow you to shift the balance between shutter/aperture.
These modes offer a good balance of automation and user control. So, any situation where you want more control of the camera than that is offered by Auto mode, but don't want to have to do everything yourself would be a good use case for the program modes (P/S/A).
P Flexible Program - Do most things but allow plenty of scope for overrides
A Aperture Priority - Use the photographers chosen aperture and balance the shutter speed up to get a good result.
S Shutter Priority - Use the photographers chosen shutter speed and balance aperture settings up to get a good result.
Automate as little as possible.
Probably, the best way to summarise the differences is that P is the 'photographer's auto', see it as an equal to the A/S modes. It's intended for someone who knows what they're doing but is happy to let the camera do the work and will step in to enhance or inform the camera's decisions. Adding fill-in flash or over/under-exposing would be some good examples.
The scenario when you dial in Auto is when you're giving a camera to someone who knows nothing about photography, usually with the only instruction "Look through the hole, press the button!"
The fundamental difference between Auto mode and P mode is the ability to control other parameters beyond aperture (Av) and shutter speed (Tv) when in Program mode. Things such as ISO, metering mode, exposure compensation, focus mode, etc. are not user selectable in Auto mode as the camera selects them for you.
As far as use cases goes I can think of a few:
Assuming that it is similar to Canon models, the Auto mode generally locks down most camera functionality to a very basic set of features. P mode uses the auto functionality for setting exposure, but otherwise leaves the rest of the camera open to the photographer.
Generally Auto is designed for people that don't know how to use the features of the camera where as P mode is for people that simply don't want to be bothered with having to make decisions about exposure other than setting the exposure compensation value, but otherwise want to control the camera.
Auto mode won't let you set anything. All settings are computed by camera.
In P-mode, camera computes exposure and let you change the ratio between aperture and shutter speed. You can find more in manual.
So fundamental difference is that in P-mode you have some control over the final image.
P-mode looks like A-mode and S-mode combined. The differences:
Don't know. As I remember, I also had started using P-mode. But due to the confusion of how the algorithm works, I moved to A-mode. I had to tune auto-ISO settings, which was frustrating and sometimes I forget to re-set it properly next day...
Now, I shoot manual and everything is much much simpler. You just rouhly choose your aperture and shutter speed. Then you fine tune it using metering in viewfinder, sometimes you pump up ISO if you want to keep current values.
