Refer Manuals with Ease!

So, you have purchased your camera! Congratulations, you probably went through the manual thoroughly, possibly even twice.

- Ashok Kandimalla

Assuming you are following the advice we advise our readers to study the user manual thoroughly, partly even twice, you look for a manual in the camera manufacturing site, for reasons of environmental protection, you are in for an unpleasant surprise. As the cameras are no longer including a printed manual. It has now become a relic of the past (Picture 1).

You need to download the manual (a PDF file) from the manufacturer's site. Once you do that, you are in for the second bad surprise. As the cameras became increasingly complex, packed with endless features, the manuals have put on weight! As an example, the user manual of the Nikon F3, the consummate pro-grade workhorse once, had 47 pages, the D750 DSLR had 538 pages, and the Z8? An astounding 1000+ pages!

Reading such a massive manual can be possible, but far from easy. Once you read it, it is even tougher to quickly skim through or jump to the page you want. Sheer size, of course, but it is going to be costly, and you will end up with a large book that is not portable.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if you had a friend who has read and, more importantly, understood the contents and is available to you anywhere and at any time, to answer your questions? You, of course, and in these days of AI (Artificial Intelligence) can have one in your computer or smartphone/tablet!

The key to this is Google's facility called NotebookLM. Briefly an AI tool that helps you read, summarize, and get information from your documents.

It is free to use, but you need a Google account, which most of you already have.

To use this, first go to the site: https://notebooklm.google.​com/ Here you can log in to your Google account. You will now see a screen (Picture 2)