Modern cameras come with more computation power than the average home PC of ten years ago. They automate everything, so naturally, as a Real Photographer™, you scoff technology and put the dial where it counts: Manual mode.

You saw the light: Aperture Priority mode is just shite, as it takes away control – your control over your creative decision. Same with Shutter Priority mode or, gods forbid, Program mode. You know that with anything but Manual, the camera will try to guess what you intended, measure the light and set one or more exposure controls automatically. Automatically! How could a computer know what you’re shooting? Canikosonic must believe you’re stupid!

So you wised up and have gone Manual mode exclusively. As a Real Photographer™, your goal is to expose correctly yourself, with nothing but ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. And it’s not even that hard, just make sure there’s no single triangle showing up in the viewfinder, neither ▶ nor ◀ on its own. Turn wheels or rings or press buttons until, depending on your camera, both and/or a dot appear, and you’ve got perfect exposure. Simple!

Chrissakes. Learn to use your camera’s exposure compensation, or go all the way and run around with an external light meter. And if you want to be really hardcore, buy a camera with no built-in meter. There’s uses for M mode, yes. But to simply copy what Satan’s Little Helpers aka automatic modes would have done, well, automatically, just to feel all rad? Sorry. No cookie for you.