The 'elitists' are for the most part photographers who jumped directly from old analog SLR to digital SLR. As the old analog film SLR's were mainly strictly manual, it's no wonder that they continue on the manual path. More than 20 years ago, I was always shooting manual... now, with the DSLR, I'm shooting mostly in Auto or preset modes, except, as Jim already mentioned, for close-ups, which I prefer to shoot in Aperture Priority (in fact that's semi Auto too...). The manual modes are great for 'creative photography', if you want to get precise control over DOF, exposure time etc, to get the effect you had in mind... But for that, there's only one way to go: practice, try & error, learn...

We do not see things as they are. ǝɹɐ ǝʍ sɐ sƃuıɥʇ ǝǝs ǝʍ