This was an interesting bit of reading. About a year ago, I had a sparkly new DSLR and no clue how to use it. Well, maybe some clues, but not a lot of them. I had my camera in Aperture priority most of the time because it seemed easier to only have to consider one leg of the exposure triangle and let my camera take care of the rest. I made a ton of poorly exposed photos that way and not a terrible amount of reasonably nicely exposed ones, too. In my noob state though, I wasn't really understanding why some of my photos came out and some didn't (why, why, why is my camera stupid half the time!?). So I looked for some classes to take and people to shoot with and learn from. There was a photography event at a botanical garden near my house in NC (since moved to FL) and during that event there was a beginner's DSLR class that was taught by someone named Haley Glatzer that I signed up for. Haley was young and she was clearly new at presenting this, but knew her stuff and explained things pretty well. Her dad (some guy who also is a photographer named Charles
) also sat in and offered some supporting explanation at various points in the class. One of the points where Mr. Glatzer did some extended speaking was on this very topic and I can honestly tell you that what he said at that time changed my photography for the better almost instantaneously. If you've read previous comments you already know more or less what it was. But basically the main points of what he said (and forgive me if you read this Mr. Glatzer and I mangle it terribly) were;
1. Learn to shoot manual first and understand the light (my favorite quote: "you're not shooting for National Geographic, right? Go out there and make some mistakes and learn from them")
2. If the light isn't changing and you have the correct exposure, you can just keep shooting without thinking about the exposure until something changes.
3. Learn how the metering modes work on your specific camera so that when you choose to use Av or Tv mode you understand what the camera is doing and you can manage it (which you can't do until you've first done #1)
I'm paraphrasing that because my memory is not so good. There were more things he said which have since started to make sense to me, but those were the things that I latched onto first and went to work on. After sheepishly asking Haley if she could help me figure out how to change the aperture on my camera in manual mode, which she politely did without giggling at me, pretty much every shot that I took that day was well exposed. Not perfect, probably, but extremely consistent. It was like night and day for me. And since that point, unless I make a major mistake (like forgetting that I set my ISO to 3200 the night before and end up with a few grainy photos until I start to question why everything is able to be shot at f/11 and 1/4000th and looks pretty bright...) I've been able to pretty consistently get a good exposure on most subjects.
So my point for all this: being the one that all of you are talking about when you say "people who are learning", I can verify for those of you who have been at it too long to remember, it is definitely easier to understand and work in full manual than any of the priority modes for a beginner. It sounds scarier to us at first, but it is much simpler because we don't have to keep watching what the camera is doing when we recompose and we don't have to remember to use AE lock or anything. Full manual is idiot proof. Get the correct exposure once and fire away until something changes. Once you take the time to understand metering modes, and how your camera uses them, it's probably a time saver to use one of the priority modes for certain situations. So unlike some who have suggested that "pros should use full manual", my thinking would be that "only pros should use priority modes... noobs stick to manual".