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mattdm
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Do To what degree should we cover extremely basic information trivial to find in the manual?

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mattdm
  • 143.6k
  • 3
  • 44
  • 72

At Do what pointdegree should we cover extremely basic information trivial to find in the manual?

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mattdm
  • 143.6k
  • 3
  • 44
  • 72

At what point should we cover extremely basic information trivial to find in the manual?

How to take a picture by looking to the display of the Nikon D5100 instead of looking through the viewfinder eyepiece? for example. This is extremely easy to find in the manual, which is itself extremely easy to find online.

The mention on page 3 is to "live view switch", which one might not understand, but on page 5, it's got:

manual clip

... and the instructions on page 44 are straightforward and include pictures.

How should we handle these?

  1. Close with some off-topic reason?
  2. Downvote as "no effort"?
  3. Leave a comment pointing to the manual (as @Tetsujin did)?
  4. Just go ahead and answer (as I did in this case)?
  5. Something else?

And, where do we draw the line? This example is very trivial, but what about something more complicated which can be found in the manual if you know where to look? What about cases where the manual isn't as clear as this one?