The Weekly Poll - Manuals

[greypoint]

The idea is to have a weekly poll to start a discussion on all sorts of inconsequential things both photographic and general. This is an old one but lets see if it works.

[magicrhodes]

I made the mistake of buying my D40 from CameraRev or something on ebay by the time I'd got it I paid enough in import tax to negate any advantage. Plus the manual was a photocopy... have since gone out and bought the D40/D40x guide which is much better but still unread 

[Simple]

I get the main points from the manual. For camera's I normally find the manuals pretty boring and not informative enough. So I tend to buy other books about the camera, such as magic lantern or in Nikon's case Thom Hogan e-books. They will tell me more about the camera than I really want to know, but the main thing is they will explain not only what button X or y does, but how it does it and why, and when to use it. That sort of insight is part of my own learning curve. In case of the D300 it was worth doing so and I still refer back to it.

[Hybridphotog]

Manual? Well, the lens goes at the front, the viewfinder's at the back, the shutter button's... there, media slot in... there, battery... there. Switch on... done.

The only manual I use is the one that's on the modes dial, and the one on the lens barrels.

[Eileen]

And I'm the really sad person who reads the manual all the way through and then goes over it again. Oh well, there's always one... 

[hevans]

I find the manual is excellent toilet reading. Just the right length to dip into and learn something new about the camera. 

H.

[Trickee]

My Nikon D80 manual is still wrapped---don't like manuals just like to get straight down to it

[bones615]

The manual was handy in the early days, but trial and error is my usual method or google.

[Oldboy]

Just a quick read of the main points and use it as a reference when required. 

[greypoint]

I note that no-one, so far, admits to reading it thoroughly . I always mean to read the parts I should but never seem to get round to it. Having used a fair few cameras I tend to think that a well designed camera should be user friendly enough for you to work out for yourself how to change the most important settings without having to look things up. Worst in that resopect were some of the old Olympus compacts where certain things could only be changed in certain modes [and I don't mean the fact you could'nt change things in fully auto]. I think it can be easy to get bogged down with detail and the best way of learning a camera is to use it until it becomes second nature you can then add to your knowledge of its functions and capability gradually.

[Jonathan]

And I'm the really sad person who reads the manual all the way through and then goes over it again. Oh well, there's always one... 

2.  Then.

I do this for a living.  For me it would be ridiculous not to know how to do something - or even not to know that my camera could do it. 

Often the questions on "pro" forums boggle my mind.  I was at lunch with a bunch of photographers - 2 of them were debating the best way to shoot a time lapse on a D2X.  They were planning to buy or rent all kind of stuff or figure out ways they could safely leave a laptop to shoot tethered.  "Um, why not just switch to interval shooting?  It's in the manual......".

Then you get people who complain that Canons do this, or Nikons do that.  Pretty much every feature of a modern igital camera can be changed in some way using a button or a menu.

[greypoint]

But that's it really - it's a need to know thing - if you want to know if you can do a certain thing that's when you look it up - some of us are at an age when needless information just confuses us

[picsfor]

I read the manual of my 30D from cover to cover - carrying out its instructions to experiement and understand what all these buttons and menus did.

The 40D i hardly touched - only to learn the differences.

The 5D MkII i have hardly touched. Always carry it around and look at it if i'm not getting something how i expected it to work - or i have some time to kill between trains with nothing else to read (the passengers are not leaving their newspapers behind!)

[irv_b]

I skim through the manual play with the kit and then reset it and play with it some more and then use it to most probably only 70% of its capabilities