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Cory Photography with Tom and Pat Cory |
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Wales, 2006 |
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Cory Photography NEWSLETTER 23 January 4, 2007
In this edition you will find:
Making Friends With Your Camera Manual Drying Things Out with Rice Wilderness Wildlife Week Birding and Nature Festival Kayak.com Tips Last Minute Travel Deals
Hello!
We hope that you have had a wonderful holiday season. We're about to be off for a few days in Costa Rica which is our Christmas present to each other. Should be great fun. And then shortly after that our workshop and tour season begins.
We still have a few spaces left in our New Zealand trip in March. This is also your last chance to sign up for our trip to Wales planned for May. Wales is sometimes overlooked when thinking about the British Isles, but it is really a very scenic location and the gardens in May are magnificent (see the picture above). Because the hotels in Wales are very strict on cancellation policies we are having to ask that if you're interested in joining us that you contact us before mid-January. Our popular Smokies workshop in April and our Newfoundland trip in July are filling so if you're interested in them please let us know. As we've mentioned before, we have so many new locations that we want to be able to offer that it may be several years before we offer most of the locations on this year's schedule again. Click here to see our complete workshop schedule.
Have fun with your winter photography and we hope to see you this year. Best, Tom and Pat
Making Friends With Your Camera Manual
We've all been there. You get a new digital camera and open the box only to find several CD's or DVD's and at least 2 manuals in several different languages that take up more space than your camera does.
In the words of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe, Don't Panic!
Actually, your camera manual can become a good friend and it really needs to live in your camera bag along with your camera. We recommend getting a pack of Post It tabs so you can mark and then quickly find the few pages that are really most important to you. Many cameras now come with a Quick Start or Read Me First Manual or section within your manual. It's a great place to start because the default settings on your camera are in most cases good choices for many situations.
One of the things that can be frustrating about your digital manual is that you will find different terminology by different manufacturers or even different models by the same manufacturer for the same thing so it's good to also mark your index (a handy section of your manual) once you find out what name your manual is using. If you don't immediately find what you're looking for it's time to start coming up with possible pseudonyms. For example you may find that there is no listing for how to set Resolution but that you will find the information under Recording Size or Image Size.
Most manuals will have a Components Guide with a picture of your camera where all the parts are identified. Usually following the name you will find a number which is the page number where the component is explained. In addition, in many manuals you will also find a listing of all the messages or symbols you may find on your LCD monitor, often again with the page number where you will find more information. Both of these can really come in handy if you accidentally hit a button and don't know what you just did or a strange symbol appears all of a sudden on your LCD monitor. It's usually easier to start here than thumbing through your manual to find where the information you're looking for is hiding.
Another thing to remember is that you probably have no reason to be concerned with at least 80% of the bells and whistles on your camera. Most of the time you don't have time to choose between 7 different focusing modes or to switch between vivid blue, vivid green or vivid red for each different situation so if it doesn't make sense or it sounds like a lot of trouble, you can probably do without it in most situations. Spend a few minutes to become familiar with the sections of your manual that are functions that you will commonly want to use and mark them so you can return to them. Then go out and have fun.
Drying things out with Rice
We found this and thought it was interesting. (unfortunately I have lost the source) "Rice can salvage wet electronics. After I fell into a stream in Cambodia, my digital camera wouldn't work. Someone suggested leaving the camera in a bag of rice overnight to draw out any condensation. Sure enough, the next morning it was dry and working perfectly."
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Newsletter, January 1, 2007 |