New Canon Disappointment
 

Shame Canon Shame

How do you feel when buy an expensive $2,500 (in Australia), camcorder to find that there is only a manual in PDF form.

GET REAL. Apart from all the hassle of printing out 183 pages not to mention time, frustration & ink costs for us consumers, camera manuals need to be carried in the camera bag for constant reference as the printed Quick Guide, though helpful, is not detailed enough. So now we have a very beautiful high performance compact camera and have to lug around a pile of A4 pages or some other clumsy non-professional lump of literature to be able to use it properly. - So far my program has crashed once in my attempt to print it smaller.

Even though it is possible to print it all-collated, double sided, and 4 pages to an A4, which I now have done, - many people may not have a suitable printer for even doing this. My remaining lump of leaves has to be somehow bound together. Fine if you have your own printing business ! Further, it probably should have an option to make it in two sections for a thinner pile.

I don't buy the argument that "Oh this is the way it is done now" as I see too many people who now see these these higher tech gadgets as too complicated and are put off buying. Further, why not print a proper printed manual and make a feature out of it ! - I feel the only way to address this is for us consumers to complain in writing to the manufacturers and keep writing. After all we are not talking about some cheap Chinese camera for $299.99 but a relatively expensive piece of high-tech gear.

For what appears to be a most excellent product, this is extremely disappointing. I have switched from Sony products to Canon because of their very poor customer service and off-handed attidude to customers and now I am thinking is Canon trying to out-do them. However, to date I only have praise for Canon customer service people who are easy to get through to, and most helpful.

Please start writing !

Ron C.

They are making a conscious effort to go green by avoiding paper wherever they can. I think
you can expect more companies to follow suit in the near future, and frankly, after reading
through the manual a few times, you'll find that most likely you won't need to carry it around.

If you have a PDA or a smart phone, you can load a mobile version of Adobe Acrobat Reader
and carry the electronic version of the manual that way and have fairly ready access to it.

I assume that this is a Canon HV30 or 40 that you are complaining about? It will not be a consolation, but the UK version of the HV30 comes with a printed manual, but no pdf version.

I find this a considerable nuisance because I prefer to have a reference copy of my manuals in a ring binder. I can download a pdf from the Canon website, but this prints with a watermark. At one time you could remove this with a script file which was available on the internet, but this does not work with recent manuals. I ended up using a screen grabber on each page of the pdf and pasting it into a Word document to get my ring bound manual.

The HF-S100 I just bought this weekend came with a printed manual.

I would rather manufactures give me less stuff I'm just going to throw away. After I've played with a camera for a few hours I will probably never look at a manual again, also I would rather figure out a new piece of gear at my house rather than in the field on a real shoot.

Software on the other hand....I will buy books for that.

even if the manual would be printed, I didn't even check mine. it's so small it's unusable,
I always prefer online or efile, easy to find the subject you reading on, easy to read on large screen; I know, some people never read manuals, some, like me, read some certain parts of it, some like to read all, but even then, why would you print all 183 pages, and you didn't print it on your home printer? any print shop for $5 will make a very nice binder for you.
GET REAL, Canon released amazing camcorder this year, way better that Sony and Panasonic in the consumer line, and you're saying shame?

Way to go Canon, Way to go!

I prefer a paper "How to start using" and a PDF manual. The less paper, CDs, plastic, the better, we may have just TWO eyes, only ONE planet! ;-D

Paper manuals
 

I hope they stop printing paper manuals all over, I have about 6 paper manuals completely wasting space and...paper. These from 3 Canon cameras. With the digital world being more and more into our lives, I see no use for a paper manual than to waste the paper. It's not like a book which would still be better on paper as to read it comfortable, but a manual...plus once you get things going and figured out your device, you hardly need the manual, which would easily be accessible even online.

I'm not a green freak but this is common sense already :)

I prefer printed manuals. I just got a HF200 and it came with one. I feel for the OP who got the PDF of his manual.

Take it to work and print the whole thing on their you-beaut laser printer!
(after hours / first thing in the morning)

Set it to 4 pages per sheet to save paper.

Or load the tray with your own A4 if you're feeling guilty!

Or for a small fee, Snap or OfficeWorks can give you a nice, properly cropped print over lunch. (I recommend spiral binding - lays flat on a table.)

I thought it sucked to not get a paper manual too, but if the upshot is a slightly cheaper camera due to less printing costs, thats ok by me.

Ive actually emailled the PDF manual to myself as an attachment and now have the whole manual stored in my iPhone!

Manual in your pocket - thats the future, folks.