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PROGRAMME MODE
The E-3, in addition to offering shutter priority (S) and aperture
priority (A) modes, has a powerful automatic exposure
calculation function called Programme (P) mode.
Now, for a lot of posers who lay claim to being professional
photographers, the use of the P mode will be derided as not
being “serious” and only used by “losers” who do not know how
to really use a camera.
Disciples of that philosophy could well consider that, in a camera
adjudged as the
“Best Advanced Camera in Europe 2008/9”
, the
designers would not have wasted time and effort to include an
operational mode that has little or no use.
Let’s investigate P mode a bit more then and see if it could
perhaps, after all, be a serious tool for photographers which – in
the author’s view – it certainly is.
Essentially, when set to P mode, the camera selects an optimum
shutter speed and aperture value setting after taking the
following into account:
• ISO value set
• Focal length of lens in use (or position of zoom)
• Metering information
• Focus distance
• Flash charge/operational status
Lodged inside the firmware of the camera is a look-up table that
contains hundreds of thousands of combinations and once the
parameters have been determined, the closest possible match to
the ruling conditions is selected and the appropriate
aperture/shutter speed value is set in the instant before the
shutter opens.
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