The other week at the UWCCF grad dinner, I figured that since it's my last year, I should actually bring a camera this year to snap photos with everyone.

I decided that I should leave my SLD camera (is that what they're calling them now?) at home and opt for a compact point and shoot, my FX520. Given that I wouldn't be the one taking most of the pictures with the camera, I decided to give Panasonic's much touted intelligent auto (iA) mode a run for its money. Essentially trusting the little camera to make all important photographic decisions for the night.

And in some cases, it performed quite well. But in others, it gave some pretty terrible results. In most cases when it did, the person taking the photo noticed and took another one. But there were at least one or two where I only had one shot, and the iA picked the wrong settings for the shot! So disappointed!

All photos were shot indoors in relatively low light (artificial incandescent lighting), so you would expect that the camera should push the aperture as large as possible.

But there's this one picture that I really wish turned out better (group shot with all the Singaporeans/former Singaporeans/Singapore PR). And the camera's choice of parameters baffles me. If I were to take the shot, I would choose wide open aperture (in this case f/2.8) and a slower shutter speed with flash (or just set to slow synchro flash on aperture priority). ISO maybe around 200 to 400. And what did the camera pick? Well ok it got the slow synchro alright. And picked ISO 400, which isn't terrible. But some how, it picked f/4.0. Say what? Why would you pick f/4.0 on a point and shoot in low lighting. You can't even use increasing depth of field, or stopping down to sharpen the image as an excuse here. It's a point and shoot!

I thought maybe it's because the person taking the shot zoomed in, which would reduce the max aperture. But I checked the focal length in the EXIF data as well. And nope, it was at the full wide end, which should have allowed the camera to pick f/2.8!

Bizarre! I used to think that I could just set my cameras on iA anytime I give it to someone to shoot for me. But now I'm not so sure.

I think I would have gotten much more consistent pictures from the night if I set my FX520 on aperture priority with slow synchro flash at a fixed ISO (say 400). Strange!