to learn camera- i dont want to read the entire manual...

[Designer]

My user's manual is dog-eared, sticky-flagged, soiled, and bent, and I'm about half-way through it!

 

[kass617]

What works for me with most new products is I'll sit on the couch with the manual and the product. Throw an old favorite movie on in the background (so it doesn't require your attention, but you can look up every once in a while for a break of the monotony) and just go through it chapter by chapter, making sure to find and test out what's being referenced. Press the buttons referenced, see what they do, take a shot of the living room, see the result. Goodfellas is a good movie because it's pretty long, so it gives you plenty of time to get through most of the manual.

 

[table1349]

My user's manual is dog-eared, sticky-flagged, soiled, and bent, and I'm about half-way through it!

So how do you dog ear a computer screen. As far as the sticky and soiled...........well we don't really want to know.

 

[Designer]

The paper one.

 

[table1349]

The paper one.

They still make those things in paper???

 

[jarg007]

Hey, man, if I can't write it on my palm, it's too much.

Thanks for the laugh this morning. I agree that flipping through a long manual is rather daunting but I have never regretted doing just that for any camera I have ever owned. It really is important, for me at least, to know all the ins and outs of a camera I am not familiar with and manual usually helps me get started.

i just started shooting (1 week in) with my camera and i've gone through a portion of the manual but not the whole thing. I'm to the point where I feel like I should go back and learn the ins and outs, i would say.

 

[jarg007]

What works for me with most new products is I'll sit on the couch with the manual and the product. Throw an old favorite movie on in the background (so it doesn't require your attention, but you can look up every once in a while for a break of the monotony) and just go through it chapter by chapter, making sure to find and test out what's being referenced. Press the buttons referenced, see what they do, take a shot of the living room, see the result. Goodfellas is a good movie because it's pretty long, so it gives you plenty of time to get through most of the manual.

thats why i wish i had a physical manual

 

[Designer]

The paper one.

They still make those things in paper???

Well, they did when I bought my camera.

 

[otherprof]

Is there a short cut to learning the camera, im more of a hands on learner. I've got a nikon d3300 should be here tomorrow and i've downloaded the manual. Is there a short cut to learning the camera or can anyone recommend the really important parts. It's like pulling my hair out reading that thing.

The way I used to learn sophisticated computer programs was suggested to me by a friend and it worked very well. He sat me in front of a computer and had me start working on a document. He then said, "call me when there is something you can't do," and walked away. I think that method works well with manual - when you want to do something and don't know how, look it up. Reading it all the way through will not produce much in the way of results - except that you will probably learn that it is possible to do things you never thought to ask about.

 

[Overread]

Prof - I think that depends. It depends how much you already know or how much you know about the items potential and the subject or what's pushing you forward. Learning what you need when you need it does work, it can work very well; but you have to have some idea that its possible in the first place or that it even exists. Otherwise what happens is you can quickly end up not using features or not realising that it can do something because you're so green to it - and in a hobby environment you won't get that same push that a job will have (because in a job you'll be tasked to do something - if you can't do that thing then you know there's something in the software that can do it that you don't know of).

Flicking through the manual helps because it introduces you to ideas and functions of the camera. Yes at first its a bit overwhelming; but that's why you play with it and practice; and then later you think "hey I'm on a tripod, I can use that mirror-lockup thing that I read about - now what page was it" or "I can use that delay mode, whatever its called" and thus you go look for it.

If you never flicked through you might never know its there to look for it.



It's a bit like Googling; sometimes you have to know part of the answer in order to be able and to know to ask the question in the first place.

 

[table1349]

What works for me with most new products is I'll sit on the couch with the manual and the product. Throw an old favorite movie on in the background (so it doesn't require your attention, but you can look up every once in a while for a break of the monotony) and just go through it chapter by chapter, making sure to find and test out what's being referenced. Press the buttons referenced, see what they do, take a shot of the living room, see the result. Goodfellas is a good movie because it's pretty long, so it gives you plenty of time to get through most of the manual.

thats why i wish i had a physical manual

http://download3.nikonimglib.com/archive1/Wywwt00lh46s0109T7E089fAaV06/D3300RM_(En)02.pdf
Download it and print it. Wallah-Physical manual.

 

[pgriz]

It's hard to learn something from the manual in one (long) session. What makes sense is the iterative approach - learn a bit, play with it a bit, go back to the manual and reread, then play some more. Sooner or later, it'll start making sense. Then you go to the next chapter. Rinse, repeat.