sidemirrorshooting

I remember when I held my former’s IXY 60 when I was in Cebu, I (with help from Frances and Joseph) took it to the next level. You can call me the Canon P&S queen (lol!). I basically can set-up any point and shoot Canon camera in any normal scenario (outdoor, indoor, cloudy, sunny, etc, Exp settings, colors, ISO, flash) in seconds. Same with my Renault (the IXY 910 IS).

I never tried looking at the manual. Everything was pretty workable with some common sense and random twiddling, but I wish I did. However, the camera came from Japan and is supplied with a Japanese manual. Which is doomed beyond my comprehension even with my supposed passing mark at the Japanese Language Proficieny Exam Level 3. (Will download the English version sometime soon)

With the AV-1, it’s a different story. Not only it was an SLR camera, it also has quite a number of knobs and buttons like my p&s, but they’re more knobbly and fiddly. There were no Sunny, Cloudy, Tungsten, yadayada. There were no color settings, there is no “Underwater mode” or “Kids and Pets”. There was no “Evaluative, Center Weighted Average or Spot”.

Instead, I had the following:

the film advance lever, shutter release, and selector dial,
with all the dust gathered since…I don’t know…1983? lol.

• An Aperture Priority camera. The Aperture mainly controls the shutter speed.
• A center weighted average lighting system. (this I have to use more to find out…)
• The Aperture Ring on the lens. Which tells me the Aperture and the distance in between that Aperture that would give me a sharp image (honestly, I still don’t know how to read it accurately).
• ASA settings, which sets the now currently known as ISO setting in cameras speed of the film in use (can be push or pulled to your likings…from 25-1600) .
• I have the film rewind knob, which is used to obviously, rewind the film (which is one of my favorite things to do after finishing a roll :D),
• The advance lever, which gives that yummy snapping sound each time I push the roll of film forward. The shutter release button with lock (so the camera won’t click by accident),
• The selector dial which has ‘A‘ (normal Aperture priority) ‘B‘ (Bulb) (nope, no C hehe…) the 60(flash arrow symbol) for usage of flash, and A->Self for self-timer aperture priority shots (which I tried at a random earlier).
• The exposure control on the screen when you peek from the view finder. ( it goes from -2 to 1000); and
• The newest discovery that I learned today : The Backlight Control Switch. It’s another one of those itty-bitty buttons on the sides of the Camera. It reduces shutter speed to 1-1/2 steps to increase exposure. I tried that earlier when I was shooting the sunset, I chose a larger Aperture, reduced the shutter speed with the control switch. SWEET MOTHER OF GOD! :D (I know…but hey, when you’re bored, new stuff always excites you, no matter how small it is…:))

  

  just below the ASA dial and next to the Red Dot on the Lens is the Backlight Control Switch :) the little knob that I didn’t know what the hell is for…but I do now! :D

And I never would’ve found out if I didn’t RTFM.

I got to know my camera better out of it so RTFM FTW! (which basically translates to “Read The F*cking Manual For The Win!”)

This blog entry is brought to you by : The Canon AV-1 User’s Manual.

Stumble it!