As one who has ADHD reading manuals, at least more than a page at a time, is difficult. Most of my knowledge of my K-5 workings were "discovered" using the thing, sometimes experamenting, sometime looking it up in the manual (which is always at home).
Try it! It's like getting a new camera every few weeks. Well, new features, anyway… JJM On Sep 8, 2014, at 4:13 PM, Darren Addy wrote: > ...is the size of the Operating Manuals. I'm serious! The previous > flagship (K-5 II/IIS) manual weighs in at 336 pages. The K-3's is > barely over 100 pages. > > On the one hand, this makes the camera's operation appear to be a lot > less intimidating to operate, but that appearance is deceptive because > the new manual contains only a fraction of the info that was there > previously. In going through the K-3 menu pages: They give you the > default value (ONLY) and (most of the time) the page in the manual > that contains more info on that setting. But there are a LOT of > settings that don't have a page number with more info. Just a little " > - ". > > The fonts and illustrations are also much smaller. That can't account > for all of the lost pages, however. Even though I just shipped my K-5 > II off to a new home, I've just printed out the manual for it so I can > try to figure out what is missing. > > It seems to me that a more reasonable approach might be to call the > smaller manual the "QuickStart Guide" and then have the full user's > manual in PDF on the software CD. > > One example of how sparse the K-3 Manual documentation is: Storing > Frequently Used Settings (Page 202-208 of the K-5 II/IIS manual).This > is reduced to a page and a half (Pg 73 & 74) in the K-3 manual. > > This newfound brevity is also much less detailed. For example, "Slow > Shutter Speed NR" is one of those menu items that now has a hyphen, > rather than a page in the manual with more info. All it says in the > K-3 manual is "Sets the Noise Reduction setting when shooting with a > slow shutter speed". A reasonable person might ask, "What do they > consider a "slow shutter speed?". The K-5 II/IIS manual has a page > (87) devoted to this setting, explaining the difference between the > options of "Auto, On, and Off". (There are some significant > differences between Auto & On.) The K-3 manual says nothing. > > It is funny that this bothers me, because I'm typically a guy who > doesn't read manuals. The Pentax is certainly useable without reading > the manual and if you have been shooting Pentax for a while you > already probably know what most of the settings do. But there are also > so many options (some of which are greyed out when in certain > settings) that in order to take full advantage of the camera and to > set it up the way I want to work I feel like I need that information. > > -- > Photographers must learn not to be ashamed to have their photographs > look like photographs. > ~ Alfred Stieglitz > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
