Using ChatGTP To Help You With Your Camera

[kurtizone]

I guess it’s no surprise that ChatGTP can help photographers with questions about their cameras. In my case, I was having trouble setting up the command dials on my X100vi.

So I created a ChatGTP account and asked the following:

Control aperture by command dial Fuji X 100 VI

What it returned amazed and impressed me - a concise summary of how the dials should be set, as well as a cheat sheet for configuring the camera for street photography. Compared with a Google search, it’s on another planet.

Here’s its reply:

https://chatgpt.com/c/689651f5-45e4-832b-9d9d-34fb91087c5e

The ChatGTP home page will provide a list of all the questions you’ve asked, so it soon becomes invaluable.

 

[John Bean (UK)]

Must be right. It read it on the internet.

I won't trust "AI" information until there is real meaning to the "I" part. And probably not even then.

 

[michaeladawson]

I guess it’s no surprise that ChatGTP can help photographers with questions about their cameras. In my case, I was having trouble setting up the command dials on my X100vi.

So I created a ChatGTP account and asked the following:

Control aperture by command dial Fuji X 100 VI

What it returned amazed and impressed me - a concise summary of how the dials should be set, as well as a cheat sheet for configuring the camera for street photography. Compared with a Google search, it’s on another planet.

Here’s its reply:

https://chatgpt.com/c/689651f5-45e4-832b-9d9d-34fb91087c5e

The ChatGTP home page will provide a list of all the questions you’ve asked, so it soon becomes invaluable.

ChatGPT is one of those things that's wonderful except when it's not. Just read this morning that ChatGPT 5 is embarrassingly unreliable and v4 had to be made available to subscribers again.

And BTW, "GPT" not "GTP".

 

[kurtizone]

Pls excuse my dyslexia.

In spite of ChatGPT’s known occasional moments of “hallucinatory” behaviour and even proclivity for right-wing - even fascist -outbursts, in my case the reply was accurate i.e. the steps worked.

Other questions I asked also turned out to be correct, per the X100 manual from Fuji.

I was and remain a bit concerned about its capabilities, but I think that Geoffrey Hinton’s recent Nobel prize for its underlying structure speaks for its future. So, while I can understand your unease with it, I’d suggest first asking ChatGPT a few test questions about your own camera and see if they are correct. Ronald Reagan’s aphorism: Trust, but verify.

 

[michaeladawson]

Pls excuse my dyslexia.

In spite of ChatGPT’s known occasional moments of “hallucinatory” behaviour and even proclivity for right-wing - even fascist -outbursts, in my case the reply was accurate i.e. the steps worked.

Other questions I asked also turned out to be correct, per the X100 manual from Fuji.

I was and remain a bit concerned about its capabilities, but I think that Geoffrey Hinton’s recent Nobel prize for its underlying structure speaks for its future. So, while I can understand your unease with it, I’d suggest first asking ChatGPT a few test questions about your own camera and see if they are correct. Ronald Reagan’s aphorism: Trust, but verify.

And that's the key, isn't it.

I'm not as skeptical of ChatGPT as others may be. I'm also not going to blindly trust its answers.

I remember when I began to use ChatGPT last year I was initially impressed at what it could quickly pull out. But I quickly saw that for the types of questions I was throwing at it, the answers were just too diplomatic. I wanted factual answers to my questions and it was too prone to wishy-washy responses. "Well on one hand we have.... But on the other-hand...". I knew the pros and cons of the questions I was asking. I was hoping for something more definitive.

 

[PapaNihon]

Pls excuse my dyslexia.

Trust, but verify.

Until we lose the ability to verify.

 

[eRaCer001]

I've done this too... but then I took it up a notch. I created a custom GPT, uploaded all my manuals for all my cameras, flashes, and other gear. Then I created a list of all my lenses, flashes, modifiers, etc. and uploaded it as an inventory of available gear. Finally, I uploaded several ebooks on photography that I've found helpful and created a custom GPT prompt. The end result is that I can ask it any question about my gear, and it will make suggestions. For example, I can say, "I'm going on a trip to ________ and I want to do some ___________ photography." It will suggest a load out custom to my gear, how to pack it, what settings to use, some locations that would be cool to photograph, ideas on unique compositions, lighting considerations, etc.

It can also answer any question about my gear and settings, including how to interface flashes with triggers and cameras. It's an extremely powerful tool once it's set up.

 

[Jacob in SC]

I have found AI models to sometimes be useful for asking about technical information about photography, especially when what I'm asking is somewhere between "so basic it is available absolutely everywhere online" and "so esoteric that the knowledge lies in the minds of just a few old men who are too busy arguing about UV filters." For basics, better to use the human-generated knowledge that is easy to find. For things above that, AI is only likely to give good info if the answers have been written down a good number of times such that the model's training data includes it often enough for it to repeat it back to me.

That said, missed details on the operations of specific cameras has been a common experience. I've asked questions about how to change something on my X-T5 and it often has something approximating the right answer. But there have been a number of times that it refers me to settings that don't exist, or gives confidently inaccurate statements about what something does. It can make mistakes about the general capabilities or specs of cameras/lenses as well.

Another example of an area where I've been disappointed at times: asking for lens/kit suggestions, models tend to miss out on options/configurations outside of first-party, recent-release.

Sometimes just having to write out my thoughts and wonder whether the response is correct is enough to motivate me to figure things out.

 

[Rightsaidfred]

This forum is an excellent source.

With the operator site:xyz.com, you can make ChatGPT search only on a specific website.

For example, you could think of prompts like “Search site:dpreview.com for opinions about Viltrox autofocus compared to native Fujifilm lenses.”

But DPReview’s robots.txt policy includes explicit rules for blocking GPTBot and others.

I am not judging it, just saying what I figured out. I can be wrong. Maybe someone knows more about it or can comment.

BR,

Martin

BR,

Martin

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