Priorities

On the "side path" of dSLR manuals - last weekend I picked up a Canon 40D my father wanted (they're cheaper in Sydney than Canberra) and had a play with it. It has a nice thick manual and lots of whizz-bang features. But being already familiar with Canon SLRs it took almost no time to figure out, even for new features not in my camera - and the manual is still in the shrink-wrap. There were a couple of minor wrinkles - for example, they've switched the ISO and flash-exposure compensation controls. But nothing that took more than a minute or so to figure out.

My view is that the controls are complex because they do lots of stuff. You don't have to use them, though. There's nothing to stop you setting it to all-manual and using it that way (in that case, though, I'd prefer my M-mount or OM gear). But if you do want to use all the features (or just some), they're there, they're not hard to learn (though only practice makes them 2nd-nature) and you only have to learn 'em once because they do translate to newer/different models. dSLRs are about 50% of my photography and, by now, the controls are transparent to me (at least the Canon ones). I use dSLRs for what I find 'em good at. Which makes changing to the simplicity of my RF gear, for other things, relaxing and so that much nicer 😀

...Mike
 
Hey, bmattock, the Woodward Drag was – aside from girls – my number one priority back in high school in the early fifties. Four one-way lanes from Birmingham to DEEtroit City and back. Stop/start lights every ‘Mile’ road – you know, Fourteen Mile, Thirteen Mile, Twelve mile ....

Two good friends back then had, respectively, two cool cars:

1) A yellow, shabby-looking, slightly-rusted 49 Willys Overland Jeepster originally equipped with a laughable 63 hp stick-shift engine ... only this one secreted a full-race Cadillac V8/hydromatic in it's bowels plus well hidden exhaust pipes and a beefed-up front suspension to keep the front end up at stock level.

2) A very plain, 49 Olds two-door V8 fastback owned by a widowed grandmother, modified only with headers and duals ... “Really grandma, it's a little noisy but you're gonna get great mileage”!

Come a Woodward Night we’d strip everything out of an interior except the two front seats, then troll the Avenue looking for ‘hot’, ‘showy’ cars. First stoplight or two we’d rev-up like nurds and let them blow us away, then eat them alive out of the third stoplight. It was great, great fun for one night now and again but never a second night – the Really Big Hamtramack Boys would have 'the word' by then and be out cruising their really low-profile monsters, ready to beat the Willys or the Olds and/or those smart-ass silver-spoon drivers from Birmingham to a pulp.

Things photographic didn’t appear on my list of priorities until I got out of college and got more reflective. Since then I’ve been deeply in, and deeply out of photography but if I could have anything back from my done-with past it sure wouldn’t be that original M3 or any other camera, or my souped-up 70 911, or a certain, very special sailboat. What it would be is my best-high-school-friend’s grandmother’s 49 Oldsmobile with the backseat out and the headers and duals on. Then I'd just sit and look at it and remember all the great stuff my friend Burt and I did those too-quick, so-special years. It's what being 71 will do to you!

PS: Easy-going subforum Roger, seems one will be able to stray a little once and a while without getting shot.

Bruce
 
merlin said:
PS: Easy-going subforum Roger, seems one will be able to stray a little once and a while without getting shot.
Bruce
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Dear Bruce,

Well, it's entertainment. As long as people don't get nasty, I'm not too worried. After all, I don't have to respond to every post.

It's also useful displacement activity. Right now I should be doing an illustration for my regular column in Land Rover Monthly but this is easier...

Cheers,

Roger
 
Hmm interesting. I love both cars and photography.

My daily drive is a 2005 diesel Fiat Panda, bought new. Tiny, impossibly frugal yet sophisticated enough for my needs (safe, good seats, aircon, great stereo, satnav). It's what I need, as opposed to what I want (an Impreza or Mazda MX-5 for example). I bought it new to be able to drive without problems for years. I can afford a 'sexier' car, yet, with the taxes, fuel prices and speed limits in the Netherlands, I chose not to.

YET, I also still own my very first car. It's a 1971 Opel Kadett. Not sexy or special in any way. Restored for far too much money (twice the amount it is worth). I just couldn't part with it and bring it to a scrapyard. Completely irrational. I rarely drive it too.

W.r.t cameras, I have a nice Nikon kit (D200 with a good set of primes and fast zooms). I'm an amateur, don't make money with photography so no D300 or D3 (yet). Still, I can do with my gear what I want and it gives fantastic results. It's way more expensive than many people would want to spend on photography. Yes, most of my lenses are second hand, and the zooms are 3rd party. But they are of course still very good lenses.

I also have some Nikon MF gear, bought for next to nothing. That's just for fun, although the results can be great too.

As for Leicas... I just bought my first one. I also bought a 'cron. Yet, I looked long and hard for a user and had a really great deal on my 'cron. Still, they produce great images. But do I need it? No.

So it's a balance between the head and heart. Yes, a good modern car, quite lavishly equipped, but a very small and frugal one. Yes, an oldtimer, but a very plain one.

Yes, a good modern camera system, but with second hand and 3rd party lenses. Yes, a Leica, but an ugly old one with a CLA and a bargain 'cron.

It does say a lot about me doesn't it... I can afford an M8 + lenses, but for that amount of money I could buy my whole current Nikon & Leica outfit! The closet full of gear, my bags, my scanners, all of my lenses, the old manual gear, the M2, my studio strobes, my light meter, my backgrounds, my light modifiers, even my fancy computer...

Or indeed, I could buy a Fiat Panda for that amount of money... and in the US probably a medium sized SUV 😀
 
Tom A said:
My Mac comes with Photoshop CS3 (I think) - I have still not figured out how to use it. Adobe Lightroom on the other hand is designed for someone who wants it to do what I want, without having to spend days pressing keys and pushing a mouse around whilst muttering "What the H### happened now!". All I want it to do is to put black frames around my pictures that go on Flickr. I tried reading the manual and the "how to" stuff and as anyone who has ever visited my Flickr site can see - I still cant do it!

It is not that I could not learn these things, but it i simply that the time it takes to learn it is in no way proportional to the use I have for it!
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Hi Tom. This is quite an eye opener, especially the last paragraph. Years ago I started playing with the then current Photoshop. I agree it's not user friendly, but after a week of playing I got what I wanted. Everything I ever wanted to do I figured out by trying. I use Photoshop almost daily, I'm a digital child (just), my whole photographic thinking revolves around it.

But the point, as you so well put it, is that it should not take more time than you are willing to put into it. The whole photoshop thing was just for fun, I never thought about it. It sure was difficult at first, but there was zero pressure and little frustration.

There is some threshold you sometimes cannot get over. Very relevant here is doing my own B/W development. For you Tom, that is probably second nature.
For me it took 10 years to get there! I was more or less forced to, because my 'pro' lab made such a mess of it. I had so many doubts and questions, how do I load film on the reel, what developer should I choose, do I need a stop bath, do I need a darkroom, how do I store my chemicals, how do I check if my fixer is still good, where the %^&* do I order a changeing bag these days, etc. etc.

Now I'm over that 'hump of doubt' and I enjoy it immensly.

So I totally understand waht you are getting at, I just approach it form the other side 🙄
 
Want a black border in Photoshop really fast?

Make a black box a little bigger than your image.

Take your image and paste it into the middle of your black box.

Save it. Photo with border.

If you want to get fancy, use a textured scanned frame of a real black film frame as your "black box".
 
Is This Off Topic ?

Is This Off Topic ?

Hmmm ...

Seems to be an sub thread on manuals and teaching ...

I am a Pro Interior Dee'signer [ Inferior Desecrator ? ] , but back in the 60s there wasn't a lot of real teaching about ., i would never survive a college course of today !

But , I was adopted by a pair of real architects to do holiday work for them , so I suppose I must have had something going for me .,, then fell straight into a decade or so of Hotel ID , which was OK ' till I was expected to run a studio - why push someone who can do one thing really well into something totally different ?

Now , I kind of try to guide the young women * [ many more than in my day ] designers whom I work for and with , in Commercial Office refurb .

[ * Gender issues mean that I can ''hear '' SHE frequencies ... sense HER, but I am totally blind / deaf to HIM frequencies - which isn't ideal as '' I "" am physically '' NOT HER "" OOPS !! So , I can '' listen '' to her , sense who / how she is ... not the words, they mean nothing ...behind the words ?

ASdee is binary - something is or it isn't - Lieca IIIc isn't Leica II , I can't ''see ' it as another object , just '' not right '' Leica II .
Few people seem to be able to grasp this , or make sense of it , but Autistic '' behaviours '' all stem from this essential difference , and are therefore obvious to me . ]

At work , we are working with , a PA , or someone from the company which is relocating , who has little or no experience of what we do .

My ASdee means that I often grasp what others see as dee'ficult , but fail on simple stuff . Often i has been assumed that I am just lazy or want to avoid the schedules and meetings which bemuse me .

GET TO THE POINT dee !!! ASdee rambling !!!

I was taught KISS ...

KEEP IT SIMPLE - STUPID .

The M 8 interface and manual is a great example of this - the Dig 3 needs a degree in Digi-speak !

I would say to a client , to the horror of colleagues - '' Treat me like a kid as i know nothing of your company - allow me to ask stupid , obvious questions and try and come up with a brief suitable for a 10 year old - "

And it works , not 'cos I needed that brief so much [ I do this all the time ]
BUT , because the client is then at ease to ask me '' silly '' obvious '' questions - relieving some of that uncertainty

Now I have applied the same idea when coaxing gender confused and / or abused vulnerable XX people to talk to me - and it works !

But I am strictly limited to ASdee / SHE people - and my hobbies / career - I can't keep up with the conventional interaction - I am totally lost there !

This should apply to all programmers and teachers , but there are good and mediocre in all areas - a good designer does not necessarily make someone who can '' think back '' to the beginning - being a constant child maybe a help for me !

Maybe we need more kids as programmers and manual writers !

dee
 
dee said:
Maybe we need more kids as programmers and manual writers !
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... and fewer greedy impulsive "kids" in the marketing and financial departments. Often bad product design and documentation results from undisciplined requirements for product functionality and usability - because the marketing guys/gals/whatever want the broadest market appeal even if the product doesn't meet anyones "real" needs; and the financial guys/gals/whatever want to get something on the shelves before the comptetetor and make a profit even if the buyers end up being somewhat disappointed. Add to the fact that the folks writing the documentation are often the very last consideration and all-too-often not an integral part of the design team. Documentation is also the first budget to get cut when funds get tight.
 
dee said:
I would say to a client , to the horror of colleagues - '' Treat me like a kid as i know nothing of your company - allow me to ask stupid , obvious questions and try and come up with a brief suitable for a 10 year old - "

And it works . . . Maybe we need more kids as programmers and manual writers !
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Dear Dee,

For the first, yup. I also used to remind them that they wanted a product that anyone could understand, and that I would therefore try to ask the questions their least competent users would ask: in particular, "What happens when I press the wrong button?"

Not so sure about kids as programmers, though. After all, we've been kids, and have some idea what it's like; they haven't been our age yet, and have not been faced with anything like as many technologies they haven't grown up with.

Cheers,

Roger
 
O>K Roger , Guru - people who can still remember being worried about whaat to do next - I have met so many '' experts '' who rush through explanations without a though of how they might be leaving someone behind -

It's odd , with my propensity to getting lost in general stuff , [ it's like lost kid all the time in an out of phase world ] I tend to notice others getting confused ... so it's something I pick up and try to fix immediately .

It's easy really - all you have to do is tell a story , with a beginning , a middle , and an end - and follow up with an index of all that could go wrong - as I was told , tell it once ,tell it twice , then wrap it up all over again ...

Why can't these people get it ? - " cso they are lost in their own little worlds ?

dee
 
dee said:
. . . people who can still remember being worried about whaat to do next - I have met so many '' experts '' who rush through explanations without a though of how they might be leaving someone behind -
Click to expand...
Dear Dee,

You know the origin of the word 'expert'? It comes from 'ex' meaning a has-been and 'spurt' meaning a drip under pressure.

Many years ago I heard of a wonderful way of dealing with arrogant primary school teachers in the UK. The person who devised it (a lecturer in education, cheeringly enough) would hand them a copy of Pravda and tell them to read the lead story out loud.

When they protested that they couldn't read Russian, he'd say, "Don't argue. Just read it."

After two or three rounds like this, he'd remind them that many of their pupils felt the same way about English.

Cheers,

R.
 
Dear Roger

NEAT !!!- 'specially as the cyrillic alphabet sends my Asdee into orbit as my head tries to resolve it ... hence my poor ID stolen Zorki ' Feds !

I love it ! It's like that for me with schedules etc - I can '' see '' many spaces in my head , like several different offices , but I can't , for the life of me count the number of differnt chairs , desks , carpets etc .. neither can I remember yesterday's work by Project Name - yet once I am shown the visuals , it's all there .

For decades , I have been stupid ... now , realising the WHY of ASdee , i am simply '' other-wise ''

i guess this makes me think again about others being called ''retard '' [ by the kids , who, to be honest , I agreed with , 'cos I knew my head wasn't working right !]
'' lazy '' dreaming '' [ by teachers ] as I was at school .

incidentally - please keep on being informative in AP ! I just love it ! 'Specially when people rise to the bait !

Do you find that in this Pixellated era , that magazines other than AP / B/W Photography / BJP seem to have lost the plot on what photography is all about ?
Lot in hyper space ?
Or is this too provocative ?

Respect

dee
 
Satisfaction is when you don't feel the urge to buy the latest gadget...
I drive a minicooper (real one) and a rover BRM and use a lot of photo gears (M3, contaxes... OM, even a G2)... and since sometimes I don't feel the need to buy more photo gears
(I open ebay and nothing happens... ) nor to change car (even if the BRM is beginning to show evidence of age ... 200000km)... is it age... ?

If I could stop working for money, find a small house in sardinia ... and migrate...

Stephan

and by the way, I have a humidor with some cigars... and a xenon 0,95 adapted to a pen FV...
 
And have time to do that... (Rollei 35 S on scala ? with a little problem on top of the film... must have been a bit warm in the glove bow of the BRM)
 

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It started with the magic of black and white printing in my older brothers basement darkroom about 1966. Gradually I migrated to Nikon F's and spent twenty years with them. They did what I wanted reliably. In 1990, after having trouble focusing wide angles in low light I bought an M3 with 35 f1.4 summilux and I fell in love. It worked and felt great and made wonderful photos. In 2001 an inheritance allowed the purchase of a bunch of Leica gear and I have no desire to change that. It's what your comfortable with. As to cars, I have a Triumph GT6 I bought in three truckloads. That probably makes me a bit crazy. Joe
 
I have a very nice 2001 BMW 520i sitting on the driveway at home. I also enjoy driving it. However, as I live in the wilds of Essex and commute 50 miles each way to London Mon - Fri, I only ever get to drive it at the weekends.

Its current market value is about £7K (£5K trade in) and, like most cars 'of a certain age' it's depreciating quite nicely...!

Priorities are interesting. I have an M6 but I'd really like an M8 - and I see that Leica are doing a deal whereby if you trade in an old camera, you also get £400 cash back from Leica - surely a sign of a full-frame M9 waiting in the wings if you ask me (please don't as I haven't a clue).

So, do I let my 520i 'rest and rust' or do I flog it and buy an M8 (and a cheaper, older and possibly less reliable car)?
 
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