Thoughts on Camera Manuals

 

I got an invitation this morning to see an online seminar on focusing when using the newer OMD cameras including the E-M5III I used for the photos in this post. There is a lot I like about the OMD E-M5III, the four-thirds format, the small size, and weatherproofing that make it ideal for hiking, and the fully articulated LCD, but what drives me nuts on all Olympus (now just OMD) cameras are the digital menus. They are way too complicated.

I 'grew up' on 35mm and 4x5 press/view cameras. A lot of photographers complained about the complexities of camera movements but those were peanuts compared to today's computerized cameras IMO. The guy presenting the seminar went through all the menus and submenus that control how the camera autofocuses in rapid fire. There are lots of them and he was a fast talker, so much so that some of the commenters asked him to "Slow down". They were having trouble keeping up with his rapid-fire delivery at the same time they were trying to follow along with their own cameras as he had suggested they do. I got so lost I gave up.

He told how to set the focusing target for different situations, how to move using dials and buttons, how to change the function of the dials and buttons to do different things, and how to reset them to the defaults. I found myself longing for the days when a shutter release was a shutter release, the aperture ring was the aperture ring, a focusing ring/knob was a focusing knob, and I wondered why anyone would want to switch them around. To me, using your camera should be an intuitive act with practice. Switching the controls around just complicates your process so that you have to spend more time thinking about 'how' to get the photo and detracting from your attention to what you are photographing.

Okay, I get it. I'm an old guy, the modern world is complicated and I am really trying to understand the bazillion (exaggeration) settings on my camera but the main menu has 6 items and the submenus go from A to J. I should also mention that there are 4 "A"s, 2 "C"s, 4 "D's, and 3 "E"s. Each of those has a sub-submenu of 5-8 settings you can choose from with at least on/off but many have 3-5 choices. 

My strategy is to set up a camera to do what I want it to do in the simplest way and leave it there. Which means I have to understand all this just once. I have a manual on Kindle but I'm not fond of ebooks for technical information. They are great for books that you read from beginning to end but if you have to flip around a lot, "see section 5 of chapter 4 for how to reset..". All this is to say I wish I could get tabbed hard copy manuals for digital cameras. Several decades ago I had a friend who was a professor of writing and he claimed that the biggest need was for technical writers, people who could explain things in simple terms that the average person could understand. Our increasingly complex technology has made that need even more urgent and I don't see that need being filled.

My New Old Book

 

I got a new old Elliot Porter book in the mail today, "The Place That No One Knew". Elliot Porter was and remains a major influence on my photography. I bought the book of Adirondack photos when I was in college mainly because of my attachment to the Adirondacks but I was taken by Porter's intimate approach which was a contrast to Ansel Adams' primarily grand views of Yosemite and the western landscape. 

The bird photo is a tip of the hat to Porter. I wasn't aware of it at the time I bought the Adirondack book but Porter's early work was photographing birds. He rigged up a 4x5 camera and flash in trees next to nests and fired them remotely, a rather complicated process. He died in 1990 and to my knowledge never used a digital camera the first of which date to 1988. I shot the above photo handheld with an Olympus OMD E-M-5III using a 14-150mm lens. I can only imagine what Elliot would have done with such a camera.

Porter's later work centered on the landscape and he published over a dozen coffee table books, some of which were reprinted in abridged format by the Sierre Club, the most famous being "In Wildness is the Preservation of the World". About 10-15 years ago used copies of his books were relatively cheap on eBay and Amazon so I collected 5-6 of them but his Glen Canyon book was too expensive for my budget at the time. I spotted the one I just bought listed at $90 for the hardcover and except for some discoloration of the dust jacket is in excellent condition. Trade paperbacks of the original (not the smaller Sierra Club editions) seem to be running $125 and up.

I went looking for "The Place That Nobody Knew" because a Facebook friend shared a post about Glen Canyon that referenced "Glen Canyon, Images of a Lost World" by Tad Nichols, a book that I bought in paperback around the time it was published. I have no memory of what I paid for it and there is no price anywhere on my copy but I was shocked to find that they are selling for $500-$1200 on the web. No, my copy isn't for sale. Tad Nichols was making his B&W images at the same time that Elliot Porter was working on his Glen Canyon photos and Elliot appears in one of Tad's photos.

Below is another Chickadee photo in memory of Elliot. Both photos were made yesterday at the feeding station on the Bloomingdale Bog trail. I did a side trip there after dropping off photos for the Adirondack Artist Guild juried show which opens next Friday, March 24th. Like Elliot's later work, they are landscapes, not birds. The show will be up for a month. Check it out if you can. https://www.adirondackartistsguild.com/