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Getting Schooled Beyond 'Say Cheese' IN an age when megapixels have become the new horsepower, Basil Papaharis found himself with a professional-quality digital camera, a gear bag packed with an assortment of lenses and a nagging problem that left him in an emotional state. "Like most things about computers, the manual was thick and gave me a headache," Mr. Papaharis said of the instructions that came with his Nikon D70. His camera, along with the Canon EOS Digital Rebel, brought high-quality digital single-lens-reflex cameras (those with interchangeable lenses) down to the consumer cost range, with prices now around $1,000. But to some, these cameras seemed to come with enough buttons, modes and dials to launch Sputnik. Rather than wallow in frustration, Mr. Papaharis, 55, and his wife, Mercedes, 49, who live in New Canaan, Conn., decided to attend a seminar run by Nikon in a darkened 18th-floor ballroom at the Hotel Pennsylvania in Midtown Manhattan. Nikon and other camera companies, along with photography schools and even colleges, have been guiding shutterbugs through the digital revolution. The theory is that consumers who have only an instruction manual can feel as if they are taking a high school Latin exam they haven't studied for. For the price conscious, Nikon and Canon offer a schedule of courses on either side of $100 a day. Private photography schools can be much more expensive. "Photographers are either looking for 'the way'- the Way, with a capital W - or they are having a specific pain in the neck that they don't understand, like how can they hold 10,000 digital images on their computer when the hard drive might crash," said Peter Tvarkunas, who helps manage Canon's education program. "Our students are either experienced and need help transitioning from the film system or they need more basic help." Unlike Nikon, which has its own school (nikonschool.com), Canon handles education by subsidizing classes taught by photography schools nationwide, making them cheaper. A recent two-day seminar in Newton, Mass., given by the Rocky Mountain School of Photography, based in Missoula, Mont., covered digital photography as well as Photoshop and cost $164. "It's fun with the pros," said Tim Cooper, 37, an employee at the Rocky Mountain school who was teaching at the Canon-subsidized seminar in Massachusetts, "because you teach a trick they don't know and a light bulb goes off. But here, there's a lot they haven't seem seen, and the light bulbs are so much bigger." The Eastman Kodak Company has a different strategy for the millions of consumers who have unwrapped new digital cameras recently, but it doesn't involve classes. "We could very easily host them," said Michelle Zeller, the company's director of consumer relationship management and Web marketing, "but in this hyper-paced world, it is not convenient."
http://www.nytimes.com
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