Does Your Camera Manual Deliver The Promise?

[raydm6]

I always got a kick out of camera manuals that promise an inferred sense of bliss or happiness once you have mastered the controls and its use. Not sure this is from the editing styles present in the 50's & 60's.

I don't recall seeing it in modern film or digital camera manuals. For the latter, I typically see the welcoming or 'congratulatory' type of statements for choosing a particular product along with pride of ownership.

...from page 3 - Zeiss/Ikon Contina-matic II and III Manual:

Once you have learned how to use it the camera will remain a source of constant pleasure.

Like many of you, I do derive pleasure from using a vintage camera and admiring its workmanship, but am not sure I am not in any state of heightened happiness.

I think "constant pleasure" is a stretch. 🙂 but I think it's written in the spirit of sharing in the joy of ownership of a new photographic item.

Anyway, please share your camera manual warm fuzzy statement(s) or promises.

 

[kshapero]

Concerning my Leica M-A, I have not yet touched the manual.

 

[Retro-Grouch]

Well, when I purchased a Sony a7, and then an a7II, neither came with a real manual. I had to go online for that; seeing endless pages of instructions for navigating the endless menus did not promise anything but aggravation. Both cameras did deliver lots of that.
These days, I shoot with film cameras that are as simple as possible. Anyone like me who cut their teeth on the cameras of the sixties and seventies could pick one of them up and immediately begin shooting, no manual needed. Maybe that's not quite bliss, but it is a pleasure.

 

[JeffS7444]

I'm not sure what the manual for the FED-1 promised, perhaps better living through Soviet socialist ideals as defined by whomever was in power at the moment. And lest the message be lost on you, "FED" were the initials of the head of the secret police.

 

[KoNickon]

Not quite the same thing, but the Rolleiflex/Rolleicord manuals are titled "[name of camera] In Practical Use," which always strikes me as quaint. Probably a translation from the German.

 

[jsrockit]

I don't read manuals unless I can't find a function.

 

[AlwaysOnAuto]

I just happened to have the manual for my new-to-me used Sony A9 sitting on the desk here, so I looked thru it, quickly, to see if any 'promises' are made in it.
Nope. Not a one is made, at least not in the first 50 or so pages I looked at.
Thankfully, getting good pictures out of it is as easy as setting it on 'AUTO'. 😱

 

[Godfrey]

The instruction manual for the 1954 Kodak Retina IIc details everything about the camera in about 22 pages, with illustrations and diagrams as well, and there are many things about using these cameras that I'd not know if I hadn't read the manual. What's my favorite 'warm fuzzy' from it? I dunno... the whole manual is written in a manner which is both self-congratulatory and supportively "attaboy, you'll get this and have a great time!" It's quite amusing.

G

 

[Richard G]

Very interesting idea to explore. All mine did deliver, but in different ways.

The M2 manual is very very practical and declarative. No congratulations at all. The short banner introduction is a masterpiece of economy and the philosophy of some declared above. "Using the Leica is simpler than reading about it." Could this be the precursor of Apple’s advertisement for the iPad: you already know how to use it.

The M6 manual: "We hope that your new LEICA will give you a great deal of pleasure and wish you many years of successful photography with it." From then on it is still mostly declarative but a bit more personal, eg don’t be too fussy loading the camera.

My first digital camera was the Coolpix 4500. There was so much more to read and understand than a film camera. I did read the whole of the M9 Manual and never looked at the Monochrom manual. The Fuji X100, my second proper digital camera, also had a lot of detail that needed to be absorbed and if I hadn’t used it in a while I sometimes needed to refer to the manual again. Now I don’t need to at all and can find my way in the menus. That manual for the original Fuji X100 Finepix thanks me for the purchase and then gets on with it. There was a lot to get on with.

Now I look at it the introduction to the Monochrom manual it both thanks me for buying it, and congratulates me for doing so, and again wishes me a great deal of pleasure and success using it. In the M2 manual and the M6 there were no women using the camera, and with the Monochrom manual the little attention to the proper holding of the camera is now served by an infographic with an eyeless head whose only complexity is a lick of hair across the brow, unisex. The M7 and recent MP manuals return to having a woman demonstrate correct camera use. In the 1930s advertising for the Leica II there was a woman to illustrate holding the camera correctly. The same congratulations and thanks as in the Monochrom manual are included in the introduction to the MP.

The Hasselblad 500CM:
“People who buy their first Hasselblad seldom do so on the spur of the moment. Their decisions are usually preceded by careful study of the camera at one or more demonstrations. But a Hasselblad is literally packed with features to which no brief demonstration can do justice. So read this Instruction Manual carefully
Previous owners of Hasselblad may choose only to leaf through the Manual. Not advisable, we feel. The Manual should be read from cover to cover. Even experienced photographers could miss a piece of information of potential importance……” and that is half or the introductory admonition.

I agree with all of it, but this is camera ownership as promotion to a new plane, one to which you as a new member may or may not be worthy, and even as an existing member, your eligibility to remain is under challenge

 

[sara]

What manuals?

hahahhahahhaa. The only things I read are: How to load the film, general placements of buttons and things.

Very interesting idea to explore. All mine did deliver, but in different ways.

The Hasselblad 500CM:
“People who buy their first Hasselblad seldom do so on the spur of the moment. Their decisions are usually preceded by careful study of the camera at one or more demonstrations. But a Hasselblad is literally packed with features to which no brief demonstration can do justice. So read this Instruction Manual carefully
Previous owners of Hasselblad may choose only to leaf through the Manual. Not advisable, we feel. The Manual should be read from cover to cover. Even experienced photographers could miss a piece of information of potential importance……” and that is half or the introductory admonition.

I did not read the manual to my Hasselblad because I had my tutor at uni just tell me how to load the film, and shoot...and I think I've been riding on just that for the past 10 years....

 

[Retro-Grouch]

Is there anything in our consumer culture that isn't sold without the at least implicit promise of a New You, richer, happier, and sexier? As far as I know, only a Leica can actually deliver!

 

[Dogman]

And now we have no printed manuals. Instead we have PDNs with several hundred pages and very little practical information. Today, if I have a question on what a function does I usually do a Google search first thing. It's faster than trying to find one bit of "how to" in those pages and pages on the screen.

 

[largedrink]

The Olympus Pen FT brochure promises new "derections" that "expand the pleasures of photography"...!