For those of us who've been playing the Sims 2, the camera controls in Sims 3 are a little confusing and hard to get used to.  Even after several hours of play, I still find myself moving my mouse to the left or right in an attempt to shift the camera by scrolling off the side of the monitor.

In fact, I still haven't found a good way to move the camera left and right.  According to the card that came with my game, you hit the left or right arrow to move the camera.  However I find that when I do this, it moves the camera over by one entire unit.  As opposed to using the mouse, when you can just nudge the camera a little tiny bit.*

Also according to the card, you can press and hold the right mouse button and move the mouse to move the camera.  However, I still haven't gotten this to work.  My mouse is a Logitech MX 500 optical mouse, and as far as I know the drivers are fine.  It's several years old, but it certainly works fine for everything else.  I don't know if I need to buy a whole new mouse, or if I'm just not doing it right.

The same goes for zooming the camera in and out.  You can use the up and down mouse arrows to do this, but it doesn't offer much finesse.  Fortunately, the scroll wheel on my mouse does work well for this.

The strangest part for me is that the default camera angle is isometric, much as it was in Sims 1.  Whenever I enter the household for the first time, I always find myself looking down on my Sims from a godlike 45 degree angle. 

My frustration with a camera controls has led me to finally start using the "save camera position" feature.  You can save camera positions and move between them, much like preset radio stations on a car stereo.  Once your camera is in a good spot, you can say this position by hitting control plus the numbers 5 through 9.  To snap your camera back to that position hit shift plus the appropriate number. 

For example, I found a good spot to park the camera and watch my Sims, where the entire house was in frame.  I saved this position by hitting CTRL + 5.  Now whenever I want the camera to return there, I just hit Shift + 5.

All these frustrations are easily balanced out by a new feature in Sims 3: "lock camera to Sim."  Simply right click on the portrait of your Sim (those little thumbnails stacked vertically along the left hand side of the screen), and the camera will automatically follow them around.  This makes it easy to follow your Sim around the neighborhood to the various community lots.  It's a lot easier than constantly zooming the camera around behind them as they walk, jog, or take a taxi to another lot.

* Note: I later discovered how to fix this.  Go to Game Options and enable "Edge Scrolling."