Read the damned instruction manual!

It’s not just cameras is it? At some point we’ve all been guilty of diving into messing about with one new piece of kit or other without reading the manual. I’m as guilty as most of not getting much further than, “how do I get the battery in?”. However, especially if you’re a newcomer to photography, or you are coming to a DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) from a point and shoot camera you’re doing yourself a great disservice not reading the manual from cover to cover.

My first proper camera, the second camera I owned didn’t come with a manual, but it did come with an Uncle. It was an old rangefinder given to me by my Uncle Alex along with a hand held light meter when he’d upgraded to a fairly early model SLR. It was given to me on a family holiday in the lake district when I was about 12 or 13 years old.

In the following fifteen minutes or so I was taught pretty much all I needed to understand about the technical principles of photography. He gave me a basic understanding of depth of field and aperture, the effects of fast and slow shutter speeds, how to use the light meter to marry the two to achieve the correct exposure, how to focus the camera and the meaning of ASA (ISO nowadays). To add to that the next few days were spent walking in the mountains talking about composition and other things to consider in trying to take an interesting photograph. That was it, I was off…

The point I’m making here is — if you don’t have an Uncle Alex — read the manual. Many of them go much further than which…