A story my relatives told me when I was a teenager stuck with me all my life. Days before going on a major vacation trip, my relative bought a brand new SLR camera (that would have been the kind that takes film, for this was the 1970s). The first time he used it was on that vacation a long way from home, and it didn't work. No vacation photos.
The lesson: make sure you shoot at least one roll of film with a new camera before leaving, for two reasons: (1) to make sure the camera works; and (2) get used to how it works.
This was reinforced last month when my daughter's French class left for two weeks in France. Waiting in the airport's international departures section, several of my daughter's friends called to me: "Mr Grabowski, can you show me how to use my camera?" They (or their parents) had bought brand new cameras for this trip.
Every camera has a different user interface, even within the same brand name. The brand new A-series Canon one girl had was different in operation from the brand new SD-series Canon my dad just bought, and so I struggled how to set the menu, etc.
Another girl loved the bright red color of her brand new camera. But the camera, sporting Radio Shack's house brand, was a dog. When taking a picture, the LCD didn't do a preview; taking flash pictures were too bright (hot spots) surrounded by too dark (insufficient sensitivity). The menu system was completely cryptic, since the 4-way control didn't do what I'd expect. Tellingly, the icons for the menu showed the artifacts of heavy JPEG compression. Probably the only good thing about that camera was the SanDisk memory card! She'd have been better off with a disposable film camera.
And the good thing about digital cameras is that the 20+ students can easily give each other CDs of their pictures, including to those students whose cameras have only a nice color.
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