Complex cameras with hundreds of pages of instruction

[Henry Richardson]

Dad's instructions to me when he gave me his Zeiss Ikon Ikonta was, leave the dial with 100 on it on 100, the other on 8 when it's cloudy because 8 looks like a cloud, 11 when it's sunny and the front dial on the red dot (hyperfocal distance).

Yeah, the old Sunny-16 rule worked well most of the time: 1/film speed and f16 for bright, sunny conditions. Then open the f-stop by various amounts for other conditions. I recall on a 10-week camping safari in Africa in 1993 a guy had 2 cameras: AF Canon Rebel SLR and he had also brought his father's old Canon Ftb SLR + 50mm f1.8. He dropped his AF Canon in water and it stopped working so he started using the old MF SLR, but the meter didn't work. He had no idea what to do so I taught him the Sunny-16 rule. He was shooting print film so I set the shutter speed to the film speed and then wrote a note about the f-stops to use in 3 or 4 different lighting conditions. Months later after we were all back home he sent me a postcard and told me his old Canon camera photos had all turned out great. Helped, of course, that color print film is very forgiving of bad exposure, especially over exposure.

--
Henry Richardson
http://www.bakubo.com

 

[Jimbob21]

if you have the youtube

 

[Guy Parsons]

Dad's instructions to me when he gave me his Zeiss Ikon Ikonta was, leave the dial with 100 on it on 100, the other on 8 when it's cloudy because 8 looks like a cloud, 11 when it's sunny and the front dial on the red dot (hyperfocal distance).

Yeah, the old Sunny-16 rule worked well most of the time: 1/film speed and f16 for bright, sunny conditions. Then open the f-stop by various amounts for other conditions. I recall on a 10-week camping safari in Africa in 1993 a guy had 2 cameras: AF Canon Rebel SLR and he had also brought his father's old Canon Ftb SLR + 50mm f1.8. He dropped his AF Canon in water and it stopped working so he started using the old MF SLR, but the meter didn't work. He had no idea what to do so I taught him the Sunny-16 rule. He was shooting print film so I set the shutter speed to the film speed and then wrote a note about the f-stops to use in 3 or 4 different lighting conditions. Months later after we were all back home he sent me a postcard and told me his old Canon camera photos had all turned out great. Helped, of course, that color print film is very forgiving of bad exposure, especially over exposure.

My story is from way back last century when I was a boy and cameras had no meters in them. A bunch of us had cameras, and those with reflected light meters usually did badly with consistency of expsoure, Moi with an incident light meter did way better and the guy who did best did not use a meter at all. He simply ripped open the cassette packet and obeyed the "meter" Kodak kindly printed on the inside with suggestions of speed and aperture for various daylight conditions.

Found an example....

Loading…

www.lomography.com

And from that page...

 

[Tom Caldwell]

you only "referred" to the manual when you were completely stuck or needed to find something specific, i went to look at some cameras a few years back and a certain model took me about a minute to find the on/off switch because between models it had moved...... gotta laugh

Case in point - the GF7 interface was just about perfect. Some liked the tilt evf. I liked that because they could hide a useful diopter adjustment under it. The GX85 disposed of the tilt evf and introduced the more usual tiny hard to adjust diopter wheel.

After some protests the GX9 brought back the tilt evf (which I have tried once and it does not do anything for me). But left the silly little diopter wheel that I need to use. They also tried to to retro with a mechanical EV wheel and generally messed up the functionality of the top plate which had been so sweet to use with the GX7. The useless retro 'style' wheel make the position of the real rear wheel less convenient and after just a little while I turned off the silly 'style' but not needed mechanical wheel that sometimes impersonates the 'real' rear wheel.

So messing around with great design to try and make it better is truly a case of 'if it works, don't try to fix it'. The GX9 has become a big step up from the GX7 but I still prefer to use my GX7 - such is the strength of the original intuitive design.

 

[Henry Richardson]

Yeah, the old Sunny-16 rule worked well most of the time: 1/film speed and f16 for bright, sunny conditions. Then open the f-stop by various amounts for other conditions. I recall on a 10-week camping safari in Africa in 1993 a guy had 2 cameras: AF Canon Rebel SLR and he had also brought his father's old Canon Ftb SLR + 50mm f1.8. He dropped his AF Canon in water and it stopped working so he started using the old MF SLR, but the meter didn't work. He had no idea what to do so I taught him the Sunny-16 rule. He was shooting print film so I set the shutter speed to the film speed and then wrote a note about the f-stops to use in 3 or 4 different lighting conditions. Months later after we were all back home he sent me a postcard and told me his old Canon camera photos had all turned out great. Helped, of course, that color print film is very forgiving of bad exposure, especially over exposure.

My story is from way back last century when I was a boy and cameras had no meters in them. A bunch of us had cameras, and those with reflected light meters usually did badly with consistency of expsoure, Moi with an incident light meter did way better and the guy who did best did not use a meter at all. He simply ripped open the cassette packet and obeyed the "meter" Kodak kindly printed on the inside with suggestions of speed and aperture for various daylight conditions.

Found an example....

https://www.lomography.com/magazine/129715-free-exposure-guide-inside-a-film-box

And from that page...

Ahh, yes. All my old Kodak and Fuji film boxes had that sort of info and graphic. Yesterday I was out walking with my Panasonic TX1 (ZS100/TZ100) and just on a lark I switched it to M mode, set the shutter speed to the ISO setting, and set the f-stop to what would be appropriate for the light which was f8. The JPEG that it produced looks perfectly exposed.

--
Henry Richardson

http://www.bakubo.com

 

[thinkinginimages]

When you need to work fast, latitude and DOF are your friends. The sun hasn't changed much.

 

[Elderly]

Dad's instructions to me when he gave me his Zeiss Ikon Ikonta was, leave the dial with 100 on it on 100, the other on 8 when it's cloudy because 8 looks like a cloud, 11 when it's sunny and the front dial on the red dot (hyperfocal distance).

But you had to know how to load it, unfold it, **** the shutter, read the frame number through the little (red?) glass aperture in the rear ......

There were are series of Guides called 'The Camera Guide', published by the 'Focal Press'.

I have a fourth edition published in 1957 for my still extant simple 35mm rangefinder camera which my father gave me (the 1st edition was 1949).

It runs to 104 pages !

 

[plantdoc]

I will admit I was overwhelmed by the manual and complexity of the Olympus.om d 5 mk3 compared to the.years of Canon dslr. I found the pdf manual to be a real slog and sometimes not clear. A couple of 3 party books were much better. Also, the menu construct could use an overhaul. Really confusing was an option not available in a menu because it's controlled by a selection in another menu. Maybe, the engineers shouldn't design the menus or write the manual.

Greg

 

[Eric Nepean]

I copy the manual onto my iPhone and my iPad so I can refer to them anytime. Then I use the index or the search function to find what I need to know.

It isn’t that complicated for most of us.

The OM-1 one works much like an E-M1mkiii or mkii, you just have to scan the manual for the differences.

A GX9 works much like a GX85 which is much like a GX7. The G series are not that different from the GX series. The GX8 was not that different from a GX7.

 

[Regor250]

if you have the youtube

Or this forum, simply ask and someone else will read the manual and tell you the answer!

 

[Regor250]

.... Maybe, the engineers shouldn't ... write the manual.

Greg

They don't, technical writers do. If engineers were writing manuals they would be a lot shorter as they wouldn't understand how could anyone not figure out their simple logical design!

--
Roger

 

[Douglas Boyd]

Back in the 1940s and later you would need to buy a box of film if you wanted to use a camera. Kodak roll film came packed with a detailed instruction sheet that not only explained how to select exposure as in your example, but also how to develop the film. It listed developers and development times. In those days the drugstore where you bought the film also sold Kodak "Tri-Chem" packs for film development. You could also buy packs of photographic paper if you wanted to make contact prints from your negatives. If you wanted to print larger, you would need to consult with the magazine "Popular Photography" and read articles by Mr. Keller on how to use an enlarger. Of course, some people just dropped off the exposed film to be commercially developed and printed or scanned. This went on until the early 1990s when video still and then digital cameras became available.

Cameras in those days also came with instruction manuals which were of course shorter than the ones we have today. For the more complex cameras of the day, sometimes there were one or two functions that required reference to the manual to use.

--
==Doug

 

[RobBurke]

Well said Tom. For me, reading the manual cover to cover is one of the delights of a new camera. Once I even managed to do that before taking the camera out of the box .

However, as I read through the manual I make a conscious effort to label each item as either “same as previous cameras”, “not immediately relevant; just remember it exists”, “new and significant; read carefully”. Usually the third category is only a few pages”.

 

[Henry Richardson]

Over the last 22+ years of using various digital cameras I have found that if one chooses to that one can usually ignore most of the fancy functions and just use PASM, S-AF, etc. and then then almost all cameras are not so complicated. If you want to make use of all kinds of new, fancy stuff though then it can be complicated.

Back in the 1960s someone gave me a toy Diana camera that used 120 roll film. I think that it cost about $2 including a roll of Kodak Plus-X B&W 120 film (12 exposures) in the package. You can still buy them new for around $50 (without film) and they are sort of popular with the art crowd. Anyway, my recollection is that the instruction manual was very simple. In fact, I think the "manual" was just a bit of info printed on the back of the cardboard backing for the clear plastic packaging that hung on a hook in the store. Easy peasy.

I am sure many of you remember the very simple Kodak Instamatic 126 cartridge cameras in the 1960s and the 110 cartridge cameras in the 1970s. Other companies made them too. Especially the base models hardly needed any instructions at all. The only control was the shutter button and loading the film was super easy because it was just a plastic film cartridge that you popped in. Did they even have a manual at all?

--
Henry Richardson
http://www.bakubo.com

 

[MNE]

Well said Tom. For me, reading the manual cover to cover is one of the delights of a new camera. Once I even managed to do that before taking the camera out of the box .

However, as I read through the manual I make a conscious effort to label each item as either “same as previous cameras”, “not immediately relevant; just remember it exists”, “new and significant; read carefully”. Usually the third category is only a few pages”.

I download the manual and read it before I even decide to buy a camera. I read M-5 III, M-1 II, and M-1 III to decide what my next camera will be.

 

[Messier Object]

.... Maybe, the engineers shouldn't ... write the manual.

Greg

They don't, technical writers do. If engineers were writing manuals they would be a lot shorter as they wouldn't understand how could anyone not figure out their simple logical design!

No, if the design Engineers wrote the manuals they wouldn’t be shorter they’d be much much longer with a lot more detail and explanation with specific usage cases for settings with examples. They would want everybody to know everything about their design

Peter

 

[Guy Parsons]

.... Maybe, the engineers shouldn't ... write the manual.

Greg

They don't, technical writers do. If engineers were writing manuals they would be a lot shorter as they wouldn't understand how could anyone not figure out their simple logical design!

No, if the design Engineers wrote the manuals they wouldn’t be shorter they’d be much much longer with a lot more detail and explanation with specific usage cases for settings with examples. They would want everybody to know everything about their design

Peter

The engineers don't get to do manual writing as their valuable time is best used for what they do best - some lesser minions are used for manual writing.

Once the first one is written then it's copy and paste for future models with adjustments and additions as things change (though sometimes they miss updating something when they copy and paste).

 

[Messier Object]

.... Maybe, the engineers shouldn't ... write the manual.

Greg

They don't, technical writers do. If engineers were writing manuals they would be a lot shorter as they wouldn't understand how could anyone not figure out their simple logical design!

No, if the design Engineers wrote the manuals they wouldn’t be shorter they’d be much much longer with a lot more detail and explanation with specific usage cases for settings with examples. They would want everybody to know everything about their design

Peter

The engineers don't get to do manual writing as their valuable time is best used for what they do best - some lesser minions are used for manual writing.

Once the first one is written then it's copy and paste for future models with adjustments and additions as things change (though sometimes they miss updating something when they copy and paste).

Exactly my point.

One time as a junior Engineer I was ‘allowed’ to write an instruction manual for end users to read - just on one small feature of a complex packet switching telecommunications system that had a 12-week training course for our technicians.

The marketing people gave me “OOH and AHHH so that’s how it works” and they sent my document to a technical writer who dumbed it down and added stupid fonts and colours suitable for kids to read. Seems the document needed to be pitched to our least technical customer. Complexity bad, simplicity good.

If you’re a reader of Douglas Adams you will understand what I mean when I say that the B-Ark passengers are now firmly in control of Earth :-(

Peter

 

[Gerry Siegel]

The more the chips get fancier, the more the engineers moved to fill them...thus more functionality, advertisers get to crow, and lo, a new model rears its guts and its head for buyers of the latest and greatest. What btw is a Venus Engine. Sounds cool and sexy.

 

[Tom Caldwell]

Not so when you are a features junky and have 200 potential function-features that can be assigned and only ten slots to fit them into .....