How often do you use these? and do you find them useful? I seldom use them myself, mostly I use Program, aparture , or shutter priority, and find my pic,s are quite satisfactory, I do alter the W/B and often go to spot focus and spot meter in unusual light, Sometimes I think there far to many options available, we managed OK without these bells and whistles with film cameras, didn't we?

I have never used a "scene" mode on any camera I've owned- even on my basic "in pocket" D85 Samsung- using program mostly,or switching to manual if I'm anticipating some moving subjects(faster shutter speeds..).
Frustratingly,there are far too many(in my opinion)high spec,expensive compacts out there which omit shutter and aperture priority- and is the reason they'd never get my money out of my pocket.
By all means,on a basic,inexpensive "point and shoot" have your basic scene modes- for those who are merely after a snapshot of a party/day at the beach...etc but once you start paying a "bob or two" surely PASM is a must...
I recently tried a compact which had only scene modes- and selected 1/125th of a sec in sports mode....!! Enough said.....!!

I learnt all I know about photography with a $20 Russian Zenit.Later I aquired an used Canon AE-1.I guess PASM is more than enough.For those who don't care a whit about photography you can just have the auto or "intelligent" mode.
I wish the camera makers gave better bodies and better lenses than all the usless gizmos for the price.

Depends on which camera I use. My old cameras I leave on auto and use the scene modes from time to time when auto doesn't cut it. My new camera doesn't have scene modes other than I can manually configure 3 custom set modes on the dial.

I guess they are useful when you want to let the camera do the work for you or you're stuck with no manual control camera.

Amen wanaclick....
As a case in point,take Nikon's current line up of high zoom compacts...
The S8100,S8200 and the S9100- all spec'd to the rafters,all quite pricey,yet no PASM...
Take the P300- nice little fellow and HAS PASM.... and they're all a similar price.....
Can I have a P300 with one of the lenses from the "S" series please...!!
Or an "S" series with PASM...

I usually shoot either sports/action/wildlife or indoor/available light (with the occasional macro), but when confronted with an entirely foreign situation, I have relied on scene modes (fireworks, etc.)

The only "scene mode" I have ever used is the Aquarium mode
for shooting through glass. Oddly enough I was at an aquarium or shooting thru glass at the time.
Also on the Canon S 95 the night scene mode is pretty awesome as well

G'day all

While P-A-S-M operations may be easily available to most of us, I do meet many people, mostly novice 'togs, for whom the scenes modes of one form or another can be & are very useful

eg:- We as 'togs know about WB, others may simply dial 'scenes-indoors at night' and get the same result

However, we recently were on a whale watching cruise off eastern Australia and my missus set her FZ28 to 'scenes-hi speed burst' and got whale breaching at 15fps ... all the while I was trying the same thing with the Kx at 2-1/2fps

Guess who has come home with-the-bacon
Guess who has a great series of 12 selected images, printed as 8" x 12" displayed along the passageway wall?
not me

Regards, Phil

Yes.

So my background is that I use to only ever shoot in Auto or maybe a scene mode, depending on the situation. Usually, I'd try a scene mode if Auto wasn't getting good results.

Then I started trying to learn more about how my camera worked (thanks to this site actually), about a year and a half ago. So I switched to P. I pretty much stayed in P after that. Then I got my DSLR and tried out the other modes in PASM. But since I really don't know what I'm doing, I will take a shot in Auto, in P, maybe a different mode in PASM, and then I might try a scene mode, like Sunset. Then I can compare what the different modes look like and what settings the camera chose. This has been really helpful in helping me understand the relationship between Aperture, Shutter speed and ISO. And if you pay attention you start noticing some patterns in what settings the camera will choose for certain situations if you use scene modes.

I will say though, that it has been my experience that Auto and Scene modes are not created equally from camera to camera. For instance, I'm not so fond of Auto on our Panasonic TS2, but on our new Sony HX9V, auto and auto + are pretty impressive, in my opinion at least. I used auto+ almost exclusively last week when I took my kids to Disney on Ice. We were in the nose bleeds and you weren't suppose to use flash (tho some were), not that it would help. But that thing it does where it combines multiple images was pretty cool. Not to mention that the in-camera Auto HDR and Panoramic modes work quite well (and are kinda neat).

So until I get more experience, I am glad my camera has scene modes on it.

The Nikon D300 doesn't have scene modes. only PASM so I have no choice even if I wanted to try one!