The camera is completely configurable - however for "fairness" I set all camera's to auto (except telling them not to use flash).

When you take the photo, there are about 9 points you see through the view finder. When in fully auto, it flashes the ones it's decided to use for this shot red while it focuses and I THINK does light detection on them too.

As it didn't use the flash - I assume it must have automatically detected the right combination of exposure, etc to get that kind of shot.