No need to apologise - just wanted to make sure you hadn't mis-understood me! A quick correction from what I told you before, I did say that Sports was one of the creative modes - I was wrong, it is in the 'Basic Zone' of the dial, AV, TV and M are in the 'Creative Zone' - sorry for any confusion.
I want to answer your question with some examples but my 20D (which has sports mode) is in for a service and the 1 series doesn't have it.
So, from memory and reading the 20D manual (with my opinions)...
Sports mode will do the following things well:
- Set auto-focus to AI Servo
- Engage multi-frame shooting
Average things:
- Beep at you when focus is achieved (I would hate that but...)
- Use JPEG to maximise the camera buffer and therefore number of shots in a burst...however I very rarely filled the buffer on my 20D or old 350D when shooting RAW
What it doesn't do:
- Engage center focus spot only (I can't remember what body you have, but it is the best spot of a very average bunch on the 20/30D and 300/350D for moving targets)
- Allow you control of Depth of Field using the aperture (it will bias towards fast shutter speeds at expense of DOF...and I can't remember if it changes ISO or not?)
- Allow you creative control of shutter speed (panning techniques, blurred wing-tips etc).
- Allow you to compensate exposure (and I can't believe this one - is it a misprint in the manual???) - a dark subject less than 25% of the frame (which is still pretty big!) will often be incorrectly exposed by the camera in evaluative or center-weighted. If you use partial or spot metering off a dark subject, it
will get the exposure wrong.
To be honest, the good and average things are so easy to set yourself that I just don't think it is worth the negatives. AV and TV modes are not as scary as you think...honest
They gently ease you into controling your camera, allowing as much to be automated as you want. Yes, you need to worry about a few more things - but they are fairly mechanical in type and practice makes perfect.