'Sorry, sir. Just doing what you asked me to': Photography newbie insists that his camera is broken, ignores photoshop employee's advice

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    Nikon 05100
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    Prove that you're just a bad photographer and your new camera is great? If you insist.
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    This was over 15 years ago, when digital SLRs were first becoming somewhat affordable to anyone who wasn't either wealthy or a professional photographer. I was in high school, had been a budding photographer for years already, and working in a small retail photo supply shop.
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    I had a customer who appeared to be in his early 60s come in one Saturday and spend over an hour demoing just about every camera we sold. I honestly looked forward to those customers because it made the time go faster and I generally enjoyed talking shop with people.
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    Eventually, he settled on one that we both thought would suit his needs and I rang him up. A few nights later, he comes back. I've already been given a heads-up by the store's owner that this guy has called ahead, and he is 1. When the customer arrives, he immediately accuses me of selling him a camera that's either broken or simply not good enough
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    for what he wants to use it for (taking pictures of his grandkids, who - like most tiny children are not - always sitting perfectly still). It's too slow, it takes the picture after the kid's already done something, every photo is blurry, etc. I take him at his word (I have no reason not to) and examine the camera, changing some settings and
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    snapping a few pictures as I go. I genuinely cannot find anything wrong with it at all. As gently as I can, I try to tell him that it may be a combination of using the wrong settings on the camera for what he's trying to photograph (while teaching him the right ones), and maybe a bit of slow reflexes that will develop with practice. Keep in mind that I'm young and
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    terrified of losing my job, so believe me when I say I'm as delicate as I can be with the whole situation. But that was the wrong answer, apparently. His solution: "okay hotshot, let's see you make it work. I'm going to wave my arms back and forth over my head, and I want you to take pictures when they're straight up." He insists this
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    will prove that the camera is too slow and can't take a sharp picture. He hands me the camera, and starts doing his best "wave your hands in the air like you just don't care" right in the store. Snap, snap, snap. I hand the camera back and let him review the photos, each one showing the exact moment he wanted me to
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    photograph, perfectly sharp and in focus. He didn't say another word. He huffed, hastily shoved everything back into his camera bag, and stormed off. Sorry, sir. Just doing what you asked me to.
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    R3dl8dy I wish I had realized it was my camera settings. I thought my pictures of blank carpet and random settings was because my niece wouldn't stand still long enough for the camera to take the picture.
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    stillnotelf This shakes loose a memory of my late grandmother. She would carefully pose us for pictures and then complain we didn't look natural enough. I loved her but her thing with photos drove us all nuts.
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    CumulativeHazard It took me a while to get comfortable enough with camera settings to even know which one was off. Reminded me of a funny story tho. My grandpa gave me an old Nikon SLR (this was like 2013), nice camera and I was excited to use it for my high
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    school photo class but when I tried to use it, it was jamming somehow, like I'd pull the handle thing to advance the film and it wouldn't pull all the way. Photo teacher gave me the name of a local photography shop. Went there and the guy said he didn't know, but he was about to make a trip to
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    an older photo/camera guy down the road who might know and I could follow him there. Got to this tiny shop and this old man with a fantastic mustache and a European accent looked at it, dragged a (magnetized?) screwdriver over the bottom of it, then flipped it over and pulled the little handle
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    perfectly a couple times. Guy from the first shop says "Well I could have done that!" Old European guy says "You don't have screwdriver." Didn't charge me anything. I still have no idea what the he did. But I'm grateful I can use my grandfathers camera now.
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    Photodan24 I worked in a camera shop doing sales and repair for 11 years and I have a good idea what his problem was. He probably wanted to just jam the trigger button at the exact moment he wanted to capture without giving it time to focus. Passive AF systems just don't work that way.
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    [deleted] I repair camera lenses for Canon, and we get things like this all the time... people say the equipment is broken, they want a new lens, but it turns out to be their settings... many times it is the gear being jacked up, but sometimes it's the
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    customer not understanding their camera settings, and I get to write a very carefully worded customer letter detailing what they're doing wrong and how to correct it...

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