Turn It All Off, All Of It!

A case against auto ISO, auto shutter, auto-focus, and auto everything!!!

I propose that 90% of pictures made not only do not require auto-exposure, auto-focus, auto-iso, or auto-anything. I propose beyond not requiring auto-anything, it's counter productive.

I’ve probably mentioned how much I enjoy shooting film more than once. There’s a lot of benefits I gain from doing that on occasion. It’s not about the film itself as I can produce the same results and surpass them using just about any camera produced in the last decade or more. It’s not about the process of developing and printing in the darkroom although I do enjoy that on occasion. Now that I no longer have a dedicated, purpose-built darkroom for film and print production it’s more of a chore.

What is it about then? It’s all about approaching any given photographic scene with intention. When shooting film I’ve never attempted camera feature parity with the digital cameras I was using. Let’s take my work-horse camera for the last decade, the Canon 5DsR; it might surprise you how much feature parity there would be with the Canon EOS-1 film cameras produced from the mid-1990’s onward. It’s not the film, it is making decisions and approaching what is in front of you with intentionally and the few parameters that matter… mostly shutter speed, aperture, framing, perspective, and where you want the focus plane to be.

Of course one can exercise intent with just about any camera, even those festooned with buttons to control every feature modern cameras are equipped with. All of those buttons and dials theoretically allow you to override whatever automation is applied to a given scene. In theory you get a starting point that optimizes everything, then you can override it all with your intent. In practice that rarely happens because you didn’t approach the scene with such intent. You really didn’t start thinking about the primary photographic parameters I just mentioned before you brought the camera to your eye. Instead you just trusted the camera to decide, maybe you even picked the focus point but that’s about it.

Most of the automation stuff that promises to make you faster is a giant lie for 90% of the pictures made. The moment you pick up a camera you have intent but much of that goes out the window with auto-iso, auto-subject, auto-tracking, and auto-exposure. In fact “intent” is subjugated to an after-thought. Before picking up the camera and lifting to your eye the light, the scene, and those basic photographic parameters should be at the forefront of your thoughts. All of those buttons to access the thousand things modern cameras can do, all of those amorphous, customizable dials, all of those overrides are not making you faster or improving your photographic vision. In fact they are all distractions and mental clutter for most situations. If there was a way for me to track the number of times photographers actually use them I would be that they would all be forgotten most of the time; too much cognitive overload distracting us from the basics.

I choose a rather mundane example illustrated above to make my case. I was using my work-horse 5DsR because that’s what I had. I could have been using my mirrorless, far more capable R6, or just about any modern camera with auto-everything. I was tired after a long weekend, up late producing prints. The scene was not exactly what I wanted at the end of our portfolio workshop as I usually set-up a light optimally showcasing the photographer and their finished portfolio. On this occasion it was just the overhead general lighting at the “wrong end” of our work table and rather dim (compared to the LED panel I like to use for this). I could have just let the camera do its thing but I am glad I didn’t. Instead I approached the scene exactly as I would have if using my M4, or OM-1, FM, or any other manual focus, manual exposure, camera.

At first glance any general scene like this with people moving around in bad light would certainly be a candidate for subject eyeball tracking and not really thinking about any sort of intentfulness (is that a word??). How would I deal with this if I were shooting film? My answer for better or worse was the following…

• I’d probably push Tri-X about a stop and shoot it at about 800 ISO for the mid-tones.

• I’d use a wide or even a super-wide to give some context and use perspective to give the main subject the weight of size in the frame.

• I’d shoot wide open, again because of the lighting conditions as well as to get some degree of focus separation. The lens I had with me maxed out at f/4. That’s fine as many of my wides and super-wides were f/4-ish. I know what that looks like this close.

• A quick meter reading gave me somewhere between 1/25 and 1/50th of a second. That was fine shooting at 1/25 to 1/50th, in fact that was great as it would show some motion blur. Something I probably wouldn’t have thought of if I didn’t think it through before blasting off shots or using auto-ISO, etc. Maybe that would add some interest and convey just a little bit of how excited our group was with all the work they did over the weekend.

• Ahhh, the lure of auto-focus… I could certainly framed things up and selected an auto-focus point on each presenter’s eye and dutifully engaged the magic of auto-focus to make sure that eye was in focus (or using the R6 let the camera do it) that would be fast right, that would make sure nobody could comment that someone’s eye wasn’t in perfect focus every time right? Wrong once I actually thought about it. Sure, I used the AF-on button to focus but I decided I wanted a plane of focus on the photograph each photographer was presenting and their face and didn’t bother focusing and refocusing and refocusing and putting all of my own concentration how that was going… Instead I just focused once on the print, then I waited for the shot to present itself only refocusing when I changed position.

While these pictures will win no awards they do serve as an example of very typical scenes where we all might subjugate intentfulness to camera automation. In this case and in most cases it’s absolutely not required and our photographs suffer from it. It’s not faster, it doesn’t really allow one to pay attention to the scene in any sort of more intentional ways, it’s usually the opposite cluttering your thoughts with the wrong things. I made two mistakes in my thought process here and I’ll remember them. The first one was I choose a more conservative 1/50th second instead of 1/25s, I would have loved more motion blur, especially with the slower moving photographers of the group. The second mistake was closely related, I didn’t bother to account for my lens which has stabilization in this case, maybe I should have even made a few shots at 1/15 or 1/8…

As for post processing, as I do most of the time I slap the same treatment on all of them that corresponds to the intent I had when making them. Every once in a while I change my mind but in most cases I stick close to my original thoughts. Yes I love the flexibility of digital but when one shoots with intent it’s much harder to succumb to getting lost in every available option open to you. Trust me, your photography will benefit from a more intentful approach in just about every case both before you pick up your camera and after you are done.

Workshop updates

Matting & Framing Workshop

This workshop is filled for 2026. If there’s interest we’ll look at opening another one as soon as the schedule permits. Get more info on Les’ site. Let us know if you want to be on our waiting list, we do notify people on the list prior to making the next opening generally available and listing it here.

Intro To Fine Art Printing

We’ve opened a new date (May 2, 2026) for our most popular workshop — Intro To Fine Art Printing. The May 2, 2026 has one spot left register here. We’ve opened another for August 1, 2026 but now there are only 2 spots left more info and register here. This one-day workshop fills up quick as we strictly limit attendance to four participants. You can find more information and sign-up over at Les’ website.

The Portfolio Workshop

I’ll give you the bad news first. We scheduled two in 2026, they immediately filled up, yes both of them with people that asked to be on a waiting list when I posted those availabilities. So, if you are interested we’ve opened up a date for 2027. Registration is available over on Les’ site.

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