As I said most of the nice bright Comets that you like to take your nice pictures of are found by amateurs,case in point Hale-Bopp and we had to wait along time for its greatest apparition.
If we relied only on automated surveys Quite a few of comets could be missed, you also did not address the point as to how these nice big bright comets and supernova where missed by those very expensive surveys when some dedicated astronomer and his quite modest scope was able to find them.
