Read The Manual issue

[douglas lee]

<p>I shoot RAW, therefore, I can ignore about half the pages in my camera's manual. I've purchased 3rd party books and found them to just restate the manual and then and some info about general photography. The camera manual isn't written to teach photography, but how to use the camera. But,yes, they generally suck.</p>

[jim_jones3]

<p>I try to read the manual on anything before using it. When I asked for the manual on a new pickup to read overnight while the vehicle was being prepped, the salesman with decades of experience said that was the first time he had ever heard such a request. However, leafing through the manual on a freeway is even worse than texting.</p>

[jay_hector]

<p>Read this . . .</p>

<p>http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=173089</p>

<p>"I am, among other things, a technical writer. In the course of my career writing documentation for industrial machinery and network appliances, a disturbing trend became clear: Nobody reads the manual. What I discovered in working closely with the customer-service departments of several firms – and what the customer-service representatives already knew – was that <em>nobody reads the manual</em>. More to the point, people frequently called customer service rather than checked the documentation to see if the answer was already there. This was not because the answer was hard to find; it was because it was simply easier to call and ask a human being who already knew it.<br>

<br /> This is human nature. We, as people, have <em>always</em> tended to want easy answers – fast answers – over laborious personal research. Common sense dictates that there's little need to spend half an hour digging through source material if the woman sitting next to you or the man on the phone can simply give you the answer and let you get on with your life. To what extent, however, does ready <em>access</em> to fast answers, to a vast and immediately retrievable wealth of data, affect our very brains? How has the breathtaking cultural change that is the Internet affected our culture as dependence on the Web has become integrated into our society?<br /> Is the Internet making us stupid?"<br /> <br /></p>

[Sanford]

<p>All you really need to know is how to efficiently search Google. Why bother learning anything else?</p>

[marklcooper]

<p>Back in the mid '70s in my first electrical engineering course the professor said we would be taught to look up stuff rather than memorize because by the time we graduated, any 'facts' we memorized would already be obsolete. We were also told that the learning process would be like drinking out of a fire hydrant...we would only retain a very small percentage of what was thrown at us. In a civil engineering elective, the professor said don't trust your memory when you're designing a bridge....look everything up. You really don't want an oops.</p>

<p>I started my thesis project in the fall of '77. I built a notebook computer, programmed it and interfaced it to various thumb wheel switches and readouts to produce an automotive TSD rally computer.</p>

<p>What made this a notebook computer was the circuit board was punched to fit in a standard 3-ring binder/notebook. It had an Intel 8048 single chip processor with all of 2K of RAM, expandable to 4K. Program and data storage was via a plain old cassette player/recorder. It had an octal keypad and was programmed in assembler. I lived with the manual that came with the computer, the datasheet that came with the CPU, etc. Google would have been great on that project.</p>

<p>That notebook computer was a wee bit different from what we're used to today.</p>

<p>Picture of the notebook computer:<br>

<a href="http://www.imsai.net/images/imsai_hist/board_hist_img/8048_raw_notebook.jpg">http://www.imsai.net/images/imsai_hist/board_hist_img/8048_raw_notebook.jpg</a></p>

 

[lex_jenkins]

<blockquote>

<p>"...you should not expect a product manual to teach you how to take photographs."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Camera manufacturers used to provide manuals that included basic instructions for taking photographs: composition, exposure, etc. Many new photographers found those simple tips useful. Considering how long and complex many user manuals are now, it seems reasonable to add those basic guidelines for composition and exposure back to the manuals.</p>

<p>But nothing will replace the need some folks feel to regularly seek affirmation. That psychology accounts for a significant amount of web forum posts. And it'll continue, at least until the cameras themselves are fitted with talking holograms to answer questions and show the user what to do next. Just talk into the little microphone on the camera and say... <em>help me, Obi-Wan Canikon; you're my only hope</em>.</p>

[jeannean_.]

<blockquote>

<p>"Just talk into the little microphone on the camera and say... <em>help me, Obi-Wan Canikon; you're my only hope</em>." Lex... best answer ever.</p>

</blockquote>

[rgerraty]

Wonderful thread. Frequently a question comes up on the notches in the Leica M2 rangefinder patch, or how exactly

to load the film with an M6. It's all in the manual. In the M6 manual is a snowy scene and some instruction on how to

expose for that. Helpful for a beginner, and related to the commonest exposure problems with point and shoots. When

I bought my first digital, a Nikon Coolpix 4500, I read and re-read the manual, and now that I don't use it much, I am

still looking at the manual a couple of times a year. I think it's very well done. My point and shoot manual for the Leica

C Lux 2 is also good, and arguably a camera with built in constraints requires even better knowledge of the manual. A

night shot of the Sydney Opera House was taken with the Fireworks scene mode setting as I knew how many seconds

that gave the exposure. The manual for my Konica Hexar is widely acknowledged to be execrable but the information

is all there. Seeing the genius of the camera is easier with a visit to one of the good forums. I haven't read a Mac

computer manual for over 10 years. No need, until the other night, when a 5 year old machine failed and I wanted to

take the back off and do some diagnostic test. I had the manual and Google. One of my juniors had trouble putting the

SIM card in her new iPhone. I commiserated and offered to help her navigate through the tedious support section of

the Apple site. Oh no, she said, I looked up how to do it on YouTube. The F3 I bought my daughter when she was 16

had required that I email her a PDF of the manual. I don't think she ever read it. She looked up a generic SLR loading

video on YouTube.....every thing else she knows I have shown her in 20-30 tiny exchanges where 1. she

acknowledges she needs my help, coinciding with 2. her listening without impatience, sometimes for as long as 10

seconds. I still think she should RTFM.

[joewhite]

<p>Terrific thread.<br>

I have read the online manual for the camera that apparently will be on backorder...maybe forever? (sigh) Anyway, it made my fingers itch wanting to test some of the functions I was reading about.<br>

"However, leafing through the manual on a freeway is even worse than texting." Very true, although I found the section on <em>What To Do if You Have an Accident</em> helpful.<br>

"It is a *fine* (isn't that what the "F" stands for?)..." Possibly. When I was in tech school, one instructor told the class, "RTFQ! What does that mean?" I answered, Read the @#!%$ question." He replied, "You have a dirty mind, sir. It means Read the Full Question." Embarrassing.<br>

Finally, as far as flying an airplane without reading any manuals...my joke is, get a dog. The pilot will be there to feed the dog and the dog will be there to bite the pilot if he tries to touch anything. That is an old joke and not meant to offend any pilots for whom I have the greatest respect.</p>

[the_mongrel_cat]

<p>the nikon d700 manual has never let me down.</p>

[acbeddoe]

<p>Camera manuals are supremely wonderful compared to any Microsoft documentation.</p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>In fact, I do not think Nikon's manuals are that bad (and at least the D300 guide still contains basic photography guidelines too). Neither was the those that came with my Fuji and Canon P&S's. Nor do I think any Microsoft documentation is bad, some of their documentation is excellent. Some is patchy. It is easy to comment documentation if it does not deliver what you need. Point is, you are not the only user. And that multitude of needs and expectations makes technical writing into a job that is a lot more difficult than a lot of people think. Listing in a few bullets how something works does not seem that hard, but to do so concise, precise, enagaging, clear and understandable for any user, without pampering the advanced user - it takes work (it may be obvious now that my job has some technical writing in it ;-).<br>

What I said earlier about marketing people influencing the user guides (product documentation on a whole) is no joke. For example, a feature like Active D-Lightning is a highlight feature, so it needs a few pages. You need to be convinced about its usefulness and awesomeness. You cannot add that any decent RAW converter will be able to do the same trick... it would make the feature less attractive. While the ability to select shutterspeed is much less covered, while in the real world,it matters a whole lot more...<br>

So, while it's one is a simple optional thing in the menu, the focus on it may distract from the basics, and the basics get less coverage because they're not cool highlights enough...</p>

[richardsnow]

<p>RTM is, IMHO, something that should be done, but rarely happens.</p>

<p>Personally, I think Nikon's more recent manuals are very instructive and anyone that has never used an SLR/DSLR should read the manual in its entirety. I prefer the PDF that's freely available from NikonUSA.com since it is easily searchable...unlike the manual's index.</p>

<p>For someone that is familiar with DSLRs, the manual is likely only used to troubleshoot an issue, at which time the question is asked on the forums due to laziness...at which point RTFM will likely come out.</p>

<p>I do agree that there are better "user's guides" than the manual...I prefer Thom Hogan to many others.</p>

<p> </p>

[lex_jenkins]

<p>Another factor, which I intended to mention earlier but forgot, is that the longer the instruction manual, the more essential the table of contents and index becomes.</p>

<p>That's the main failing I see in many paper instruction manuals - the index is often very poor. The advantage to the electronic copy is that it's self indexing, assuming it's in text format that can be searched, rather than a snapshot of the page reduced to an image file that can't be searched.</p>

<p>It might be helpful - tho' impractical in some cases - to include the entire instruction manual in electronic form on the camera itself. A simple search term entry interface and smart search option could ensure you always have the instructions with you.</p>

[DickArnold]

Just to add to my earlier post where I found in teaching classes that manuals are very difficult for beginners. I am an 8000 hour ATP rated pilot. I have flown over twenty different airplanes. I never read an aircraft manual or camera manual from cover to cover like I would read a book. I use manuals as reference documents that I go to learn about a specific airplane system or in the case of cameras where I go to to learn a specific function. I usually do this with camera in hand so that I can perform the function while I read about it. I have never been able to read through and understand all Canon custom functions and be able to use them. I still have to reference the custom functions in the manual just to find out what they do at times. I know some functions well but don't know others that frankly I have never used. After over some eight or ten Canon bodies I still don't know how to use all custom functions without looking them up. My point is that generally manuals are reference documents not novels to be read. The first function is usually how to get started but one needs to be familiar with the jargon that all manuals contain in order comprehend what they read. Many neophites according to my teaching experience don't understand that jargon. I think my Canon manuals are adequate. I have an ELPH where you don't really need to know much to get started but in use many users, IMO, are never able to fully use the capabilities in even a P&S. I am not taking a stand just pointing out that there are many thousands of users that never read their manuals and also many thousands of users, if you look at Canon's vast sales statistics, that don't know enough about photography to even understand their manuals. That's reality. My 5D manual is pretty good I think. It gets you to the green square pretty quickly but there are pages and pages of instructions all in extremely small print that quickly become quite daunting.

[Andrew Garrard]

<p>The sole reason I'm (occasionally) of any use on these forums is because I'm a geek, and I RTFM. It's why I don't mind paraphrasing for people on the beginners' forum - if they can't make sense of the manual, maybe my attempt to explain will help. If it's anything more complex, I'm probably out of my depth.<br />

<br />

The first thing I do before I buy any expensive piece of electronics is download the manual (which is why it annoys me when Nikon UK, for example, try to make it difficult). Specifications in marketspeak on web pages tend to be plain wrong, misleading, copied from the wrong product, etc. Manuals are far more likely to be correct, because nobody tried to update them to match the latest look-and-feel redesign. They're also more likely to tell you what's <i>missing</i> from a device.<br />

<br />

Manuals also tell you how to <i>use</i> a feature. One of my favourite courses at university was on Human-Computer Interaction; I'd have liked it even more if the lecturer didn't think Apple was God. I <i>care</i> if someone has screwed up how to use something; it's a reason I keep talking about how I'd like to tweak the interface on my D700. Back in the 1990s, I used Acorn computers a lot, and there was a philosophical difference to the software compared with the PC versions: PC software had a vast list of tick boxes that made people think it was superior when they read the back of the box, and Acorn software had a few features with enough flexibility to recreate all the rest - which you'd see if you read the manual. Unfortunately, for sales, usability is trumped by marketing - which is why we'll never see three screens of special effects replaced by a few sliders, and why people buy compacts with thirty scene modes but no P-S-A-M options.<br />

<br />

It could be worse. I made a point of downloading the manufacturer's version of phone manuals, because my network used to rewrite it and remove all the useful information. At least camera manufacturers don't do that.<br />

<br />

I'm pretty happy with the D700 manual, in that it strikes a balance between getting started and what features have certain effects. It does do it by introducing the camera features in some sort of order, not by saying "if you want to achieve <i>this</i>, look for feature X", so in that sense it's not so good for dipping into, but there's no lack of photography books or courses out there. To me, reading a manual would be more painful if I had to skip through "this is a focal length, this is an aperture" every time I wanted to find stuff - although having a manual in PDF form helps. And there's always the in-camera help, which has saved me a couple of times I've been away from the computer and wanted to do rare things (for me, bracketing and setting a custom white balance, since I usually shoot in RAW and without HDR).<br />

<br />

If someone says "where's the <i>generic feature</i> on my camera", I think RTFM is perfectly valid as a response - preferably with a page number reference in case they've failed to find it. (Unless someone actually says "I read this, but I don't understand it" of course.) If someone says "how do I do <i>something not specific to their camera</i>", RTFM isn't an option, although "read an introduction to photography" might be.</p>

[erkan_umut]

<p>Recently I've bought a Nikon P7100, and its owners (reference) manual is not user friendly compared to Canon and Sony manuals.<br>

Too much the same long sentences with page references in parentheses are duplicated causing the readers' confusing. Instead of this, a shorter description or symbol would be fine.<br>

Also, despite the manuals are prepared for dummies or novices as well, adding so much detail to easily understanding things makes it worse.<br>

Sony, as a leader in user friendly manuals since years, and Canon use more step-by-step operational drawings showing the camera detail drawings than Nikon making the manuals easier to understand. </p><div></div>

[Sandy Vongries]

<p>I sit down with the new camera and manual for several sessions and work through setting up the camera as I go. The manuals travel with me -- either hard copy or on my kindle. I still have the three volume Nikon Nikkormat Handbook by J.D.Cooper produced in 1976 in film days under EPOI , and still consult it on occasion. That was an excellent manual -- possibly a high point, but hardly portable!<br>

Really no interest in the "For Dummies" books, though I occasionally look at videos on the Nikon site online. Memory, particularly of rarely used features, is fallible, being equipped with the manual can be invaluable.</p>