“I have personally found that approach to be too tedious, especially
when the shutter speed itself has no bearing whatsoever on the way the
image will come out.”

Shutter speed has everything to do with how the image will come out. If your
shutter speed is to slow the image might not be sharp, its its a tad
to long it might be over exposed.

Think about this for an example, I’m shutting a deer in low light, the
deer is going to move so I know I have to have a fast shutter speed. I
set my lens to f2.8 and then set my shutter speed to be fast enough
that I can get the deer in the photo with out any blur. If I used Av
and set my camera to 2.8 it would have likely chosen a slower shutter
speed. My images of the deer from Yosemite where all a little dark
(underexposed if you asked the camera) but no matter in my RAW work
flow I was able to fix that in 2 sec.

Sure I could use Av mode, set my lens at f2.8 and then change the EV mode
to tick my camera into using a faster shutter speed. But that takes as much
if not more effort then setting the shutter speed by hand.

I’m not saving Av is never good, I’ve played with it a lot. In fact I
use Av or auto when I am doing ‘street photography’. I know its not
perfect but I’d rather get the shot then miss it playing around with
my setting.

I would say that 90% of the time you want a photograph that is exposed to middle gray, which is what metering will do for you, and evaluative metering really works 90% of the time.

Even when the shutter speed is important, I personally leave my camera in Av mode and use the EV controls to “force” the shutter speed to where I want it (which I believe I mentioned in the post). In exactly the same way you would set the shutter speed and notice that the camera blinks “-1 EV” in the viewfinder, I would simply set it explicitly to -1 EV and get exactly the same effect.

It’s really six of one and a half dozen of the other; everyone has their own preferred method. I’m sorry if I misrepresented your approach, but it seemed a good example of a different opinion of shooting modes.

Most (if not all) digital SLR cameras have a variety of “modes” that they can be operated in, such as Av, Tv, Portrait, and so on. I will attempt to demystify these modes and explain how to use them most effectively for the greatest creative impact…

I’m using Nikon, and always use Av – aperture priority.
But if I shot sport, I use – Tv, or P mode.