I understand and agree with your sentiment but IMO Auto gives you little to no control of the look of your final image. .
Little or on control over the look? Do me a pistachio & cherry!
Sorry, its seasoning. You don't 'make' a photo 'in' the camera, twiddling knobs and buttons. You make a photo in what's outside the camera, what you put there deliberately, or what's there incidentally, and how you arrange that in your frame ... playing with the settings? adding seasoning, may enhance what you got and make a better dish, if you know what the seasoning does and how much to use, but you need more ingredients than just salt and pepper!
I agree at first shooting in manual will give you more duffers, but if you understand the exposure triangle you should know why. .
That's like saying adding salt makes things saltier, and adding pepper makes them more peppery, & that's all you need to know to be a gourmet chef!
The exposure triangle, doesn't explain why or when or how to use the ISO, Aperture and Shutter-speed controls.. just that if you do, all effect exposure value, if you change one, you have to change one or both the others to keep the same exposure value... there.. that's the exposure triangle explained... does't really help any-one much, and any-one who didn't know what it was before is probably now scratching their head wondering what an 'exposure' is! And why they might want to change aperture or shutter or ISO! And THAT is what they REALLY need to know to be able to 'season' their shots with either of these controls... and that's when it starts to get slightly more complicated!
Drilling down that bit further, and answering those queries; Exposure or Exposure Value, is essentially the 'brightness' of a photo. How light or dark it is. ISO is the sensitivity of the film or electronic 'sensor', and says how much light you need to make an exposure of a certain brightness. The Shutter-Speed, controls how long you let light to the film or sensor. longer the shutter speed, more light you get, the more 'exposure'; your picture gets brighter. Aperture is a 'tap' in the lens, a hole that can be made bigger or smaller to let in more or less light, again, making picture brighter or darker... and STILL this doesn't explain to any-one how these will change the 'look' of their pictures, other than changing the exposure, or brightness, that, NOW they are confused, because you have said they need to keep that the same!
So, they can change anything they like, but if they do they have to change something else to keep it the same.. so why change anything....AND we have more and more questions, and have to drill-down even further, explaining how ISO setting effects noise, and Shutter-Speed controls motion freezing or blurr, and the aperture effects the Depth of Field, and what? sorry? WHAT does that do to my photo? HOW does that change the 'look'?
And we have to drill down even further, in ever more detail, to each in turn! And each in turn, begs more questions begging more explanations to go round and round in circles, getting ever 'deeper' into infinitesimally more irrelevant questions of 'style' and loosing sight of the bloomin picture we wanted to take in the fist place, chasing all the questions raised rather than answered by mention of 'the exposure triangle' that doesn't tell you how to take a better photo, or explain why you might want to make different ''manual' settings to what the camera would offer on 'auto' or even tell you how to choose settings to make on manual!
Pictures ent made by 'style', pictures are made by 'subjects'.. go take photo's of subjects... when you think they could be improved with a bit of seasoning, THEN you might want to consider whether a little salt, or perhaps a bit of pepper might make them 'better', and how.. but you HAVE to have the ingredients first, and only the photographer can go find the 'ingredients' and put them in the camera, it wont do that for you; BUT it can cook them, and it CAN season them, how it thinks you probably will want them seasoned..and do a pretty damn good job of it... so LET IT! Do the bit the camera cant.. and get good ingredients!
Jeez, Our Kev here was having a tough enough time trying to make his mind up between three camera bodies. When he realised he had to choose a lens as well, and was presented with five to select from he near had apoplexy! And latest seems to suggest that he abdicated even that, and took the only choice he was offered in the shop on the day! Give him two dozen possible aperture settings, a three dozen dozen possible shutter speed settings in 1/3 stop increments, the ten ISO settings to make a choice between?!? He's likely to go into melt down! And its completely unnecessary. Keep It Simple. Don't make matters more complicated than they need be, sooner than they need be!