[Huawei P40 Pro Questions & Answers] Klosterbruder:
Unfortunately, that just means that other PRO modes are even worse than our P40 Pro's PRO mode.

I regard the PRO mode as an unbearable nuisance. It had been a fully-fledged catastrophy with the P20 Pro - and Huawei didn't learn a single lesson since then.

We've got such a capable camera system - totally crippled by that "Pro" mode making every non-newbee boil with rage. :/

Just a few short examples:

Huawei provided the option of locking some settings, so they won't change after restarting the camera. I can lock Exposure compensation (EV), Autofocus mode and White balance - but I cannot lock ISO, Metering mode and Manual focus!

ISO: High ISO values cause grainy pictures, thus I wish to keep my ISO as low as possible. One of the most important settings. And Huawei doesn't allow locking that.

Metering: Spot metering ist the way to go if you don't do just point-and-shoot. Full range metering (default) calculates a kind of brightness average - resulting in lighter parts of the picture burning out. This is not recoverable (not even with RAW files), the details are gone forever. That's why we better use a bright spot for precise metering, even if the whole picture gets a bit darker. Darker parts can be saved, burned out parts are gone forever. And Huawei doesn't allow locking the metering mode to spot!

Manual focus: Manual focus is just unusable (thus not being able to lock it doesn't mean the end of this world).

But: To be able to manually focus, I need to press on AF, choose Manual focus. Then a focus bar appears almost in the middle of the screen, covering the picture, forcing me to use the tip of my finger on the picture, thus I don't see great parts of the motif anymore. Then I am unable to focus correctly because there is NO MEANS for helping me focus, like focus peaking, just NOTHING. I can just watch the tiny picture getting more and less blurry and guess where I could set the focus to achieve a half-way sharp picture. In the end, the finished photo shows I guessed wrong. I don't see any details while focusing, I cannot switch to an enlarged display for being able to set the focus correctly. Just guess, just hope somewhere in the middle between two blurry settings could be somewhere near sharp.

Plus: The focus bar disappears after 4 seconds. So it you need some more time, the bar is gone, you need to tap AF again. And if you wish to tap the bar while it just disappeared, your whole focus setting is also gone because your finger hit some part of the picture as the focus bar isn't there anymore - and focuses on the part you just accidentally tapped. It's unbelievably stupid.

That's why manual focus is just a pain in the you-know-where with almost no practical use at all.

And we really, really need manual focusing with that shallow depth of field due to an aperture of 1.9, especially for close range shots.

Had been that way with the P20 Pro, didn't improve at all over time.

And that's just a few reasons why that "Pro" mode isn't much more than a useless toy.

Sorry to say, sincerely. I really, really hope it gets better. :/

I am still happy about the "Pro" mode being there - because it provides some BASIC means (like choosing ISO and metering mode); but that's no PRO features, that's basic features which should be present with all "non-pro" modes anyway.