Los-Angeles-Shooter Loc: Los Angeles

It's too much to hope for ... at least for cameras coming from Japan!

TRIVIA: Many decades ago, airplane manuals were c..p. Disorganized, adulturated with sales pitch garbage. Incomplete. Poorly written. You had situations where a pilot, desperately searching for the info to deal with an emergency, found himself wading through garbage about what a splendid plane he was about to crash in. The feds then laid down guidelines and airplane operating manuals to this day are pretty good. At least those for USA-made plans. One of the very few actions by the FAA that were clearly positive.

Tomcat5133 Loc: Gladwyne PA

I would like to add one thought to this very good question "Are Cameras Becoming Too Complicates?" Being a producer and seeing the difference between good video training or google
demos's by nice people and a manual is just to long and hard to find an answer when you really need it.
I find the demo's on different features and controls on youtube and the net are far superior.
We project that visual learning on video will take over in the next few years. This is what the experts predict. Larry Jourdan's video series on Final Cut Pro X is so easy in segments that are short in minutes to the point you need to know more about is great.
Visual will surpass print whether we like it or not.

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

Both of these are true.

GeneinChi Loc: Chicago, IL

I have a manual for my RX 100M3 coming today. It too is 500 pages. I already know that I won't use the camera to its entire capability but I do want to know what those capabilities are!

Ranjan Loc: Currently Cyber-Nation!

Photographers are essentially *visual people*, perhaps by natural selection? So, what you wrote makes perfect sense!

Regards,

skiman Loc: Ventura, CA

As usual you are taking an extreme view as the best solution. To me, there is a reason cameras have features and it is to give the OP the ability to get shots that they would normally have missed because of the time it would take to setup the camera in manual or the time in PP to get the desired result. If I tried to do some bracketing shots for HDR it would take soo much time too setup, it would not be enjoyable. Also, different types of shooting can use different featues of the camera that you might not use all the time. Having the ability to change my metering or auto focus from center to a larger area are great features that I am glad I have. Also the ability to set an auto ISO range, bracket at the push of a button, setup back button focus, or have two SD slots that I can change the use of (backup or raw on one and jpeg on the other) require reading the manual. I will gladly spend the money on hardware (and the time reading the manual) that can do these things instead of doing everything in full manual and missing many shots. If the camera limits hour creative potential time to upgrade.

sodapop Loc: Bel Air, MD

Agree with you skiman.
Learn the camera AND photography. That should not bo too much for most people and will make you a better photographer