Professional photographers only shoot manual, and other myths.
I recently commented on a post that someone had put in a beginners photography group asking for help with a backlit portrait situation. Predictably it didn’t take long before someone called me out and said I was WRONG!
The original poster had asked a question about how to get their subject properly exposed in a backlit situation. They further mentioned that they had “adjusted the f number a lot and couldn’t get it right”. However, their background was exposed nicely, so it’s quite probable they were in a semi-auto mode and using evaluative metering (matrix metering) and that the camera, regardless of the aperture they had set, was exposing for the larger portion of the image (sky and background).
So I commented, suggesting the use of a semi-auto mode such as aperture priority alongside the use of spot metering used to meter the subjects face. I also mentioned in this scenario the resulting image would likely have a blown out background but a correctly exposed portrait subject and that by doing this, you could look back at the resulting photograph and see the settings the camera meter chose, taking notice of shutter speed and ISO as well as the aperture.
