Shooting story

For my birthday this year, a friend gave me a Canon PowerShot P&S camera. It replaces the POS Nikon I bought a couple of years ago, which went bad shortly after the warranty expired. (That clunker makes me rethink ever getting another Nikon product, and I’ve been shooting with them since I was in high school. In fact, my Nikon rangefinder was what inspired the name of this blog.)

That POS replaced my old Canon PowerShot. And look how they’ve compressed the tech, from 2003 to 2013:

This baby will pretty much do everything except the dinner dishes. But what they’ve also trimmed back is what they send you by way of operating instructions. The little green-rimmed thing is what comes with the camera. It’s divided into English and Spanish versions so you barely get 70pp of info. 

They expect you to use their online user manual—online meaning it doesn’t just come on a CD, but you have to be connected to the Internet to access it. You can’t download it onto your hard drive.

And it’s a PDF file with no way to get through it except by paging through—no hyperlinks, no go-to-index option. Seriously, Canon—WTF?

What I ended up doing was emailing their support people and whining that I can’t read the dag-blamed online manual, so would they please send one to me. They didn’t want to—“We have to print it out. On 8.5” x 11” paper”—but I insisted.

And what arrived was indeed on letter-sized paper. One hundred ninety-five pages worth. That’s how complex this puppy is.

Anyhow, I love my new toy, and I’ve been slowly figuring out the various functions. Playing a lot with low-light shooting, taking pictures of latte art and carrying it around when I take walks. It's even inspired me to pick up the DSLR and try to learn more about its functions.

Color me happy. And digital.