I got to thinking. Whenever I say that to Ginny, she gets nervous. Lord knows what I am going to come up with. Anyway, one setting that I never use on my cameras is the "auto", you know the green one. Ginny and I would joke and say just set it on stupid. Well, I got to wondering how good (or stupid, for that matter) it actually was. Normally I shoot aperture priority at f8. Just a habit held over for many years that f8 is the "sweet spot" for sharpness on most lenses. I haven't looked into that lately. I might, but then again I might not.

The reason I got interested in this is that whenever we take group pictures Ginny goes through hysterical gyrations trying to get the settings right. That takes a while and the subjects of the future picture rapidly lose interest in the proceedings, especially me. So, would you get a satisfactory result first crack out of the box by putting the camera on auto? I went down into the kitchen and took some photos of targets of opportunity. This particular one is my ingredients for a meatball soup which turned out to be very good. The photo is straight out of the camera. For a photo like that it isn't too bad. A little tweaking would help some.

What I did notice is that the settings the camera came up with are (see EXIF data) 1/60, f8, ISO 320. That is not a combination that I would choose. My guess is that the little gremlin in the camera who takes control in the auto setting is angling to keep a low ISO with a semi-reasonable shutter speed. I will tell you I had the flash popped up and the gremlin chose not to use it. One of the other pictures I took the gremlin used it.

What this clearly indicates to me is that a considerable experimental program is required. I need to try the 5D M3 and see what happens. What I am anxious to see is what that little guy sets up with a 400mm focal length at 15 feet. That will certainly be a DOF challenge. Is he smart enough to take DOF into consideration? Am I smart enough to take DOF into consideration? More to come when the sunny weather returns in a few days.