We used to take the mickey out of Japanese user manuals for not being written very well. My favourite example was “engine not turning very round”, although sadly I suspect that may have been apocryphal.
Now, I think there’s a danger they are swinging the opposite way. Yesterday, in the manual for my new Canon 7D, I found a word I never expected to find in a camera user manual: “hereinafter”. Correctly used as well, but is this quite the language we expect of a user manual for the masses?
| Front of the Grand Hotel Suisse, Montreux, Switzerland | |
| Camera: Canon EOS 40D | Lens: EF70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM | Date: 14-08-2009 18:12 | ISO: 200 | Exp. bias: 1/3 EV | Exp. Time: 1/1600s | Aperture: 6.3 | Focal Length: 110.0mm (~178.4mm) | Lens: Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM | |
Here’s a picture from my Swiss trip last year. I was a little disappointed with my shots from Montreux – it’s such a compact town it’s very difficult to isolate the buildings and features from one another. However, I’m reasonably pleased with this one. The palette’s great: everything the same yellow and red, with the rest almost monochrome (I haven’t made any adjustments apart from a slight overall saturation boost). Of course, if I’d been taking a commercial shot with the hotel’s permission I’d have tried to get all the blinds deployed to the same length, but I didn’t have that control. Still, I think it’s balanced enough to work.
Let me know what you think.
| Another of my favourite subjects - sunset light on water | |
| Camera: Canon EOS 40D | Date: 05-10-2009 16:27 | ISO: 200 | Exp. Time: 1/3200s | Aperture: 8.0 | Focal Length: 300.0mm (~486.5mm) | Lens: Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM | |
Hi, welcome to my new photo blog. Here’s a shot taken on my trip to Santorini last year, a “grab shot” of a rather nice yacht scudding along in one of the island’s trademark sunsets. The triangular shapes at the bottom are actually the edge of a nearby roof, out of focus.
Let me know what you think.
Andrew
Well, maybe not exactly a split as such, but a new structure. “Thoughts on the World” is a pretty eclectic mix of professional, personal, humour and photography-related content. However, one reader who follows mainly my “professional” content expressed a wish to see this separate from the more personal stuff. Given that I’m about to add more photography and review content to the blog, it seemed reasonable to try and meet that request.
I have therefore now created a number of new “views” of my blog, and a number of specialist feeds, as follows:
For more details, visit my Blog Views and Feeds page.
Gordon Lewis at Shutterfinger recently posted bemoaning how Image Stabilisation technology doesn’t work in some circumstances, especially when the camera’s on a tripod. This has caused me a number of jagged fireworks pictures, and others, over the years. Regular readers will recall my suggestion in What I Want In My Next DSLR that it would be easy for camera design to include automatic detection of “tripod mode”, and simply turn IS off, or at least visually warn the user.
Camera manufacturers have made enormous strides in very difficult technology areas, but current DSLRs fall down in so many simple usability areas. Why?
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