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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eidian" data-source="post: 186356" data-attributes="member: 14514">Sorry, I should’ve clarified—my niece defaults to Auto mode 95% of the time. She’s worried about messing up a picture and really has no interest in adjusting settings when the camera will do it for her; her logic is that “she” paid for a camera to do all of that work for her. *I only shoot in Manual mode because it’s all that I know from my Canon AE-1 days (I know, I’m dating myself). *I’m not saying that I’m as good as Canon’s Auto mode, but I’m happy with the results that I’m getting now because of what I describe in my next paragraph…*When I tried out her camera, I couldn’t believe how good the pictures were turning out at my father-in-law’s birthday party. *I swear it seemed like I couldn’t mess up a picture even if I tried to. *I only took about three dozen pics with all kinds of shutter speeds and apertures with her flash but I didn’t delete a single picture because they all came out pretty good. *One “problem” that I had with my camera was that I had an SB-400 which is a good flash if you’re in a small room with a low, white ceiling shooting in landscape—but not if you’re in a large restaurant with low light. *My 400 was really hit-and-miss, I just couldn’t get consistent results. *As result of that I immediately got an SB-800 and couldn’t be happier (well that’s not entirely true, I got two more 800’s so I guess I’m three times happier). *Before that flash example it was from her camera that I realized that I needed a prime lens if I was going to get the bakke that I wanted for close up shots (BTW, you may want to consider the 35mm f/1.8 G DX. It’s a great lens for the money). *So while she might do a portrait in in Auto mode, I feel that I can shoot an equally good pic with my set up now in Manual (sure it might all be mental, but shooting a portrait with a 35mm prime lens with an SB-800 sure seems to beat out using the 18-55 zoom and SB-400 that I started with).*Nikon’s CLS is so fricken cool because it allows us people who have “entry” level DSLR’s to command numerous flashes. I got my mounted 800 to command the other two within twenty minutes of receiving them (oh, and I would suggest getting rechargeable batteries because these big flashes suck the life out of the batteries pretty quickly).* You’re really going to like being able to command off-the-camera flashes; I don’t even have umbrellas yet but I had a blast experimenting with the flashes. *I can’t wait to save tons of money this holiday season when I take our family portraits with my own setup instead of going to a studio or hiring a photographer.Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 4</blockquote>

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