Yes, my Nikon does that too, if you hit maximum ISO that you set. I forgot to mention that.
1 Like
I use something similar all the time for zone focusing in street photography on my Fuji. I set the aperture exclusively (usually to f8) and my ‘ideal’ shutter speed (usually around 1/500s) and let the camera select the ISO (within a determined range of my chosing; usually 200 -1600).
All of the shots will be f8. Where lighting conditions permit, all shots will also be at 1/500s with ISOs adjusted automatically to achieve an axceptable exposure. When there’s not enough light and the ISO is maxed out, the camera will only then drop the shutter speed to achieve a decent exposure.
I don’t think it’s useless, but handholding often compromises exquisite sharpness. Choosing aperture for sharpness rather than exposure at the expense of DOF is usually reserved for landscape photographers and others who don’t mind slow shutters on a tripod. The depth of field on that camera even wide open, though, might make this a stupid question.
If sharpness is the major goal, I imagine that many people would set the best f/number for the lens, not the subject … often f/5.6 and certainly not f/22, e.g.
Image source: LensTips
Thanks for all the great replies. After reading them and doing a bit more background reading, I came to the conclusion that P mode is a leftover from the film era, and does not really have a use case in todays’s MILCs.
It appears to be introduced by the Canon A-1, and was a great feature at the time as it allowed photographers to focus on getting a decent shot without worrying about being outside the feasible aperture or shutter range. Recall that cameras at the time maxed out at 1/1000s for the shutter, and film only allows a bit of over- or underexposure. Using aperture or shutter priority can lead an inexperienced users outside what their camera can do when light changes. No wonder that all manufacturers copied program mode very quickly.
With today’s sensors and cameras, we are spoiled: 1/16000 shutters, IBIS, lens IS, ISO adjustments or post-capture pulling of shadows that would have seemed magical to photographers in the film era.
Aperture priority works so fine that Program mode is not needed. For example, when I am hiking, I can set my camera to the desired aperture, and it will capture bright landscapes with 1/8000s shutters even if I leave the aperture comparatively wide. Then if I spot a lizard in the shadows, it will select 1/60s and if necessary crank up the ISO and/or use IBIS or lens IS to stabilize the body. Even hastily done 1/15s shots turn out fine. That’s a 1000x latitude in shutter speed, or about 250x if I stick to 1/60s to freeze motion a bit.
Will P mode ever disappear? It would make sense, but I doubt it. Camera makers are extremely conservative and interfaces rarely change. That said, it would be great to allow assigning that position in the dial for something else, effectively another custom mode.
2 Likes
I wish other camera systems implemented Nikon’s Highlight Weighted metering. It’s such an obvious thing to have, I don’t know why we are stuck with these algorithms from 20 years ago.
Maybe they could even allow the user to create custom algorithms, for example: If the highlight weighted metering was clipping the shadows too much, it would raise the exposure until a certain threshold set by the user was reached. I believe that with these in place it would be much easier to go full auto or even priority modes. It sucks to have to constantly adjust the exposure compensation(or metering mode) depending on what you aim at.
Maybe in the future we’ll have FOSS cameras with all these bells and whistles. One can hope 
2 Likes
I think that many did. Eg the Panasonic GH6 surely has it, and I think the G9 (mark i, the older one) does too (but could not dig up a manual quickly). Neither are recent cameras.
But of course there will be users who don’t understand it and complain about photos being too dark 
2 Likes
Must be a Fuji thing then, this is unfortunate
I thought the Fuji equivalent was the “DR” setting?
1 Like
Here’s mine for what it’s worth.
399164.pdf (13.5 MB)
I didn’t look for the subject at hand, their manual is unintelligible to me.
It is a common misconception to assume that Panasonic manuals are meant to be intelligible.
They are, in fact, a sleeping aid. I usually take 10 pages for mild, 15–20 pages for persistent insomnia.
As for the issue, apparently the G9 got this feature in a firmware update. That’s quite decent of Panasonic I think.
6 Likes
Man, this gave me a good laugh, thank you 
4 Likes
+1 about highlight-weighted metering. It’s my default metering mode, and whenever I choose to go back to one of the middle-gray modes I immediately feel the pain of capture-blown highlights, unless I am giving that up in advance for an in-the-shadows subject with a bright background component.
It then poses a burden in post-processing, as I have to do more manual per-scene shadow lifting than I would if I were anchoring on middle-gray, but I’ve streamlined my workflow to make it fairly expedient. My wife and I sat across the kitchen table reviewing our last vacation’s pictures just a couple of days ago, she’d say, “Can you lift DSZ_6305-6310?”, and I’d do it in a few tens of seconds. I’ve shown her the difference, and she gets it…
2 Likes
DR settings on a fuji change the jpeg tone curve. 100 is the base, and increasing the number adds more contrast. It also messes with how the histogram on screen is calculated, so if you care about your RAW file, best leave it at DR100.
If we’re going to start talking about other features, the lack of any tooling in camera to help us deal with raw exposure settings/histogram seems unforgivable at this point. Manufacturers are way to wedded to their precious jpegs, I hate it.
1 Like
The DR200 mode underexposes by one stop, but compensates by raising the tone curve. In DR auto mode, it auto-enables DR200 if there’s a hot highlight in the scene, and stays at DR100 (normal mode) otherwise. In other words, it behaves as if I’d toggle the exposure compensation down whenever there are hot highlights, but always shows a well-exposed image in the viewfinder.
I actually find this preferable to the highlight-weighed metering in my GR, since it still shows a reasonable image in the viewfinder even when it actually underexposed the raw. I leave my camera on DR auto constantly, and use exposure compensation for creative purposes only.
To my mind, this is an underappreciated feature of Fuji cameras.
2 Likes
Spot on !
Used to go for Aperture priority and setting relevant ISO according to the scene, but finally S mode with constrained auto-ISO is far more useful.
1 Like
Thanks for the clarification. I never got used to this on the X-T20 and thus never used that feature. I am pretty much in M mode only with area metering or whatever it is called. My interest was to get as close to a “raw histogram” as possible, which meant a flat film sim and -2 on the shadows/hightlights in the jpeg tone curve. The X-T20 didn’t have a film sim that was very flat (and now it’s IR converted so the metering is even more different now).
I’m just wading back into the fuji waters with a new camera, and trying to re-ingest all the fuji-isms is intersting. I’m still pretty much M only and setting exposure by hand for ever frame. New camera has eterna film sim, wnich seems quite flat and still -2 shaodws/highlights on the jpeg tone curve. I haven’t had time to get out to really push it though, so maybe next week.
3 Likes
I also use aperture priority in most cases - and it turned out that the possibility of setting a minimum shutter speed was a game changer in occasional family photography. My old camera (Canon EOS 850D) didn’t offer that, but the new one (Canon EOS R10) does. This little piece of software code helps me a lot and could have been easily implemented with a firmware upgrade, I guess.
But there must be users of the P mode, since Canon pushed this even further by adding a “FV” mode (“flexible priority”). It’s kind a PASM mode dial with a different interface to shutter speed, aperture and ISO priority. I don’t get the meaning of it. Or is somebody using it?
1 Like
I rarely ever use P mode. 99% its Aperture mode for me. There are some rare situations where I like automatic mode (e.g. when I just want to be able to make fast snap shots in changing conditions) but then I actually tend to use the full “smart” auto mode, so I don’t have to think about settings at all.
I very much enjoy the ISO auto mode of the Fuji X-T4, though. My old Nikon doesn’t have this, so there I had to keep much more of an eye on the shutter speed.
1 Like
Just for interest, I looked up P-mode in my 2003 Sigma SD9 Manual. None of the settable limits and auto-ISO adjustments mentioned so far appeared, not that they should.
As to the initial values, it says:
To make picture taking easier, the camera will automatically select an appropriate combination of shutter speed and aperture value, according to the brightness of the subject.
… with no hint of what constitutes “appropriate”.
The only stated limits for P-mode are for shutter speed:
1/6000sec to 15sec. (ISO100), 1/6000sec. to 1sec. (ISO200, ISO400)
They are the same limits applicable during normal camera operation (not P).
As a consequence at 100 ISO, the aperture can’t be set over f/19.
1 Like