Is a sort of a photo safari. The instructor (Who hung around afterwards and yapped for a long time, despite twenty plus years he still has a great passion for his craft) said to me “I started having THIS class because if we went right to the photo-safari bit, we spent all our damned time showing people how to use the cameras and no time actually taking pictures.” I can see what he means. I spent some time tonight just rapidly switching settings and moving shit around, and i can see how just a little bit of drilling will make you a wad better. A couple of the things he showed us:

The shutter release defaults to “push a little and I’ll focus, push more and I’ll take a picture” But what isn’t obvious is, if you keep holding the shutter partway dowm it either holds the very first focus, or keeps continuously focusing. This is a camera setting. Also, you can remove the focus from the shutter release altogether and attach it on other buttons so that the shutter release does shutter only. Another of the programmable buttons puts the ISO setting at your fingertip with the thumbwheel, you can change film speed to suit you while you are framing a photograph.

I guess I had assumed most of these things were possible but I have a zero-tolerance policy where manuals are concerned; a booklet for a camera that is more than ten pages long is not an owners manual but a reference guide. I write operation manuals, and no matter how complex the system, I keep it to one page. The code is well written enough that this is all the operator ever needs. Sometimes I have to write a ten or fifteen page book of instructions for maintenance people, and that consists mostly of safety and recovery procedures. So when I cracked open the 65 page Nikon manual, I figured out where the shutter release was and put it back in the camera bag. Now that I have been taught the basics, I will refer to it as I need, but I have a lot more information than I had two days ago, and I’m having fun.

When film photography- most commonly 35mm film photography- began to be popular, there was a surge in people taking classes, going on photo safaris, etc, and I suspect we will see this more and more with the advent of good quality inexpensive DSLRs. It has to be good.