Digital Home Thoughts: David Pogue's Plea for Honesty in Photo Specs

"Anyway, the caption always gives the specs for the photo: "Taken with a Nikon D90 at 1/200th second, aperture f/2.8, exposure +1, using Sigma 18-200mm lens" or whatever. It's always bothered me that often, the camera came up with these settings. Plenty of shutterbugs use Auto mode or Program mode, where the camera computes the shutter speed and aperture size."

I'm with Pogue on this one - and I'm not ashamed to admit that quite often I shoot with my camera in full auto or in partially-auto mode (typically aperture-priority or shutter-priority mode). It's very rare for me to go 100% manual mode - and even if I do, I leave the ISO set to auto, so I'm never really 100% manual. Here's how I see it: there are things that I'm good at (framing, knowing when and where to point the camera, when to take the picture, etc.) and there are things the camera is good at (selecting an ISO based on available light, etc.). So I let the camera do what it's good at, and I do what I'm good at.

I feel the same way about transmissions in cars; I only drive automatic transmission cars, because there are things that I as a driver need to focus on...shifting gears is not one of them. I know someone's going to post that driving an automatic takes all the "fun" out of driving, but I still love driving...just like I love taking pictures, even if it's not in full manual mode.

Where do you stand on this issue?