About PhotoTrainer

Introducing a Forum for the Well-tempered DSLR Camera

PhotoTrainer came about as a result of questions. A little of my personal experience with cameras is helpful here, if I may digress. My interest in Photoshop during its infancy in 1993 set the stage for a lusty hunger for digital cameras. The problem is that they were hopelessly disappointing until 1997. Commercial photographers were becoming ravenously insane for a decent digital camera. I jumped in with the Leaf digital back for the Hasselblad camera in 1997. With the monochromatic Loral sensor, an RGB filter wheel and a 25-foot, half-inch SCSI cable, I was in heaven. Rube Goldberg was my patron saint. The files were sublime. The B&W monochromatic files were proof of higher intelligence in the universe. But this was s $30,000 camera... It eased the pain.

But not for long, cameras got better, slowly at first, but the competition between manufacturers served us well and the pace quickened. Every 18 months, for the next seven years, the next best cameras that were offered up at a cost of two, ten, twenty grand and were depleting studio profits and photographer's wives were pointing at couches all across America. I did not miss film as much as I thought and sold my darkroom off in 2002, sadly but decisively.

In 2003, the questions began. When people heard I was a photographer using digital cameras, the questions were fast and plentiful. As the state of photo-electronic quandary persisted mightily, I found I could expound effortlessly with my point and shoot view of the digital landscape. I was classically trained with large cameras, and film – I was schooled in Hell and was then working in Heaven. I am wildly enthusiastic about the gifts digital technology has given to photographers.

The defining moment came when my wife Cate came up to me brandishing her new digital camera and said to me with a stamp of her foot and a lingering contrapposto stance, “OK, I do not have time to read this entire camera manual. I want to know what I need to know and nothing more.” The resulting outline of information and tips I wrote for her became our pilot class in April of 2006, and PhotoTrainer was born.

Since then, we have refined a unique, useful course methodology that demystifies the hardware, firmware, and operations of your modern camera. We have also created a safe intervention to reorganize the (your) DSLR camera manual according to the practices of good photography, whereby the Terrible Master becomes your Wonderful Servant. Our crowning achievement is our PhotoTrainer Jumpstart Your DSLR camera guide, that is the definitive practice companion for the well-tempered DSLR.

—Tom Upton
www.tomstudio.com