There is a place for both.
There are many times when just setting things manually works a lot better because you can set it by trial and error and then go with that setting and get exactly what you want. Often this ends up being easier than ETTL because you only need to adjust things one time and then you're set for (for example) shooting a bunch of portraits assuming the studio setup remains the same.
This is also true with other situations where you don't want things being fooled by changing backgrounds or varying reflectivity of the subject (or their clothing). Manual can not only be more accurate, but less work in such situations.
But despite that, the thing is that there are still times, with widely varying conditions, where ETTL is the best we can do at this point. There just happen to be situations where things are changing too fast for us to use manual. Heck, you can't even set the output without pushing a button and turning a dial - that is if you can see the display - where's that darn light button? Arrrgh!
There is good use for both manual and ETTL. But it is true that very often manual is easier and better. Just not for fast-moving shooting on the fly situations. It's not that unusual for a wedding or event photographer to have assistants carrying the remote flashes. In that kind of situation, you may not have time to do things manually the way you would in a studio or fixed setup.
If the distances change, then the flash power(s) must change to accommodate that. If things are happening too fast, you're no longer able to use manual. And that's where ETTL comes in.
But Canon used to have an interesting solution for this (for one flash, at least). Back in the days of the FD lenses, they had a gizmo that attached to the front of the lens that contained a large potentiometer. The pot told the flash what the focus distance was. And that dictated the flash power. That system was pretty much foolproof because reflectivity of the scene had nothing to do with it. It simply set the power to match the distance. Simple, effective, and accurate. Of course, you could fine-tune things with aperture so once you figured it out for the film you were using, it was a done deal!
I often wish we had a simple "distance mode" for these modern flashes. Anything that reads the reflected light can be wrong just as any light meter in the camera can be wrong. There's no way for it to ever know what the scene really is so it cannot judge from the brightness of the image it sees. But a distance mode where we still had FEC to tweak things might nail things perfectly (for a single on-camera flash) every time. Of course it'd be useless for multi-flash setups so I realize this is kind of OT except that distance came up.... I digress
I look at auto flash the way I look at auto focus. It's great when you need it, but when you don't, then manual is usually best. But there's a place for both and I'm darn glad to have the auto mode when I really need it. But you do need to practice with it to get to where it'll do what you expect it to do! It's just very hard to come up with a system that can handle any scene automatically. It's just impossible for the camera to know what's important and what isn't.
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Jim H.
