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This group will be migrated to the new design soon. Please contact the group admins to start the migration and save content the group may lose access to.

We're Here to Help!

This Group is the Digital Photographer's best friend.

JOIN UP! - You never know when you'll need this Group!
(With over 39,000 deviantART Groups, you were lucky to find this one!)

This Group is meant to be a "help-line" for digital camera users. It's an unofficial "users helping users" model, with no affiliation to equipment manufacturers. The idea is to hook people with questions up with people who know the answers.

Found your User Manual entry doesn't help, or is confusing or ambiguous?

Can't get your camera to produce the shot you're expecting, even though all the settings seem right?

Need to adjust or change a setting but can't figure out how to accesss it?

Found a settings option you'd like to try, but can't figure out exactly what it's supposed to do?

Wanting to to get your camera to do whatever, but can't figure out how from the manual?

This is the place to ask!

Currently, ALL MEMBERSHIP REQUESTS ARE AUTOMATICALLY ACCEPTED and you don't have to write any "reason" in the Join text field). (Unless of course, you'd like to tell the Group a little something about yourself and/or your camera :-) .)

Affiliates

:iconminolta: Minolta Minolta User Group :iconeverything-nikon: Everything-Nikon For all you Nikon lovers :iconcanonphoto: CanonPhoto Photography - Powered by Canon

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Although this isn't an Art Group, what the hey--a little eye-candy to spiff the page can't hurt! (And Sorry, during our intensive, Help-focused Group start-up work, we regretfully cannot at this time divert energy into managing Member-suggested Art submissions.)

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KoiBubbles II by Hengki24
I Just Wanna Live by Alitn
To our Members, and to those of you who haven't joined yet:

I will be MOVING (me, not my art) within the week. I may not have Internet access for several weeks to a month -or - ??? (But, I will try to respond to anyone who messages me, before I lose access... .) As the (currently) only Admin of this Group, my absence will mean Questions posted to the Group will not be answered until I get Net access again!

If you want to JOIN, ALL MEMBERSHIP REQUESTS ARE AUTOMATICALLY ACCEPTED and you don't have to write any "reason" in the Join text field). (Unless of course, you'd like to tell the Group a little something about yourself and/or your camera :-)  .) Your JOIN request will be automatically accepted, even though I'm not here to manually accept it, so ... JOIN UP!

Please feel free to continue asking "How-To" Questions, Noting, Commenting, etc... I'll get back to you all, to answer "How-to" Questions and respond to other messages, as soon as I can get back on the Net....

Thank you all for your continuing patience and support!!
#Hlp-With-Your-Camera is pleased to announce that we have successfully provided practical assistance to the first of our Members to present a "how can I..." question!

Group Member yaoiteachings101 uses a Canon EOS T2i D-SLR, and asked how in heck to set the camera to shoot in black & white, thus avoiding the need for post-processing to achieve a B&W final product.

While this Group slowly attracts a following--we need "experts" on every make and model of camera to join up as "solution-finders"--I as Founder (and currently the only Admin) am the only resource person available to answer questions and provide help.

Although yaoiteachings101 and I are both Canon owners, the similarity stops there. In my non-D-SLR Canon SX-10IS, setting B&W mode is a simple 3-step process. yaoiteachings101's D-SLR is however, far more sophisticated and configurable than my SX-10. She got her camera with no English User Manual, and was stuck. I got hold of Canon's downloadable PDF T2i Manual, figured out how to get it into B&W mode, and sent yaoiteachings101 a hand-written, 7-Step paraphrasing of the Manual's scattered information on B&W mode. My 7-step "how-to" worked for her, first try.

It's a labour of love running this group and--until we have a large expert-base--I am committed to personally doing all required legwork, researching, solving, and responding to all Member Questions.

If you know your camera like the back of your hand--please Join us a volunteer as a model-specific "expert."

And do check out yaoiteachings101's Gallery--she has a very interesting "eye," and is shooting a very eclectic mix of colourful subjects in some very interesting ways!
We are humbly seeking Points (or DeviantDollars) donations so we can upgrade to a SuperGroup.

This Group has the potential to be one of the most important "core" Groups on deviantART!
for the thousands of photographers in our community. The enhancements available if we could upgrade to SuperGroup would be tremendously valuable.

If we get a donation (or donations totaling) 4,796 Points, we can do the upgrade. You can learn about Points-giving by clicking here. (If a PopUp screen offers a Comment field, be sure to write "For SuperGroup.") (The required equivalent DeviantDollars amount will be posted here shortly as well).
HELP!

I need to figure out what the best way is for us, as a Group, to log user questions and have knowledgeable people respond to them. Any help or ideas/info would be greatly appreciated. (Heck--I haven't figured out yet if we can have a Forum on the Group's main page (and not just in the Admin area!)

If you know of a Group that functions in that kind of Q&A format, a Note or Comment pointing us to that Group would be greatly appreciated, as we could model after/adapt whatever technical mechanisms/features they are using.
JOIN UP! - We're just starting up, but Join right now anyway--you never know when you'll need this Group! (With over 39,000 deviantART Groups, you were lucky to find this one!)

Currently, ALL MEMBERSHIP REQUESTS ARE AUTOMATICALLY ACCEPTED and you don't have to write any "reason" in the Join text field). (Unless of course, you'd like to tell the Group a little something about yourself and/or your camera :-)  .)


CALL FOR MODERATORS AND META-HELPERS
(COMING SOON--deviantWATCH this Group to get the official Blog announcements on what Positions are opening up)
(But feel free to Note us anytime to express your interest in advance)

Input from any user knowing the answer to a question is golden stuff. But we're also looking to assemble a "living knowledge base" of moderators who are likely to have the info you need on the tip of their tongue. Volunteer moderators will ideally fall into three broad groups:
1) Users of a specific brand and model, who have pumped their User Manuals and understand their cameras' myriad features inside-out, and
2) Users of a specific brand who know the typical feature-sets of a particular series
3) Users who have plumbed the depths of Web support/tip sites and have ready lists of helpful sites to which they could point other users needing help.


RESOURCES WE HOPE TO COLLECT
A really techie/nerdy/geeky Member base (to answer Member Questions) will always be our strongest asset, but also:

* Links to hard-to-find online User Manuals or "Quick-Start" guides and User Guides (if you busted your butt to find it--we'd like to list it here!)

* Mini-FAQS (which you can write yourself!) on some of the more perplexing camera "features" (please Note us before writing a FAQ, to avoid duplicated effort)

* OTHER GOOD STUFF (this list will be expanding, please Note us with suggestions!)
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:iconeyeeagle:
EyeEagle Featured By Owner Apr 27, 2010
Hi, Dracos!

Thank you for your support!

"Not knowing how to operate a camera well" covers a lot of different levels of proficiency.

True--many (most?) people who own camera of any type never learn about the basics of sxposure, depth-of-field, etc.--for those people, I still think, after all these years, that the Time-Life photography series book "The Camera" is the best reference/intro there is.

The problem we're trying to address here is how to get our new-fangled digital beasties to perform those simple functions (who'd be able to guess how to get their non-D-SLR to manual-focus without hitting the manual? And some digitals don't even have an aperature! [they use an LCD plate as a neutral density filter to control light=no aperature-regulated depth-of-field control!])

This Group's focus is to help people access and fully understand the operation of the more idiotically-designed (=non-intuitive) settings options on digital cameras.

Enjoy your new job, and spread the word about us around DART! ;-)
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