One of the things that makes some enthusiasts dislike this situation -- inexperienced shooters with big budgets and no appetite to learn -- is that some of those people manage to take some really good shots without having any damned idea how they did it. There's a sense of "you should have to earn it" that I catch a whiff of, from time to time.
I certainly saw that in ham radio, particularly after the no-code license came out. "If I had to learn code, then you should darn-well have to learn code . . ." and so on.
Some folks, I think, simply get in over their heads. My wife and I were walking on Peebles Island when we met a man and wife. He had a DLSR with a x-300mm zoom lens on it, and he was getting some interesting shots. He was a retired doctor, plenty nice, plenty bright. He also didn't know squat about his camera. He was using the "moving objects setting because the wildlife he was trying to shoot was moving," and that was the extent of his knowledge.
Henri Cartier-Bresson, if I recall correctly, was only interested in shooting. He did not develop or print his own stuff. Does that make him less than a "real' photographer?
Frankly, I am interested in stunning images and whether they were taken with view camera or an instamatic or hanging from the left landing gear of a Stutz biplane is immaterial.
I think, perhaps, that one thing that could be done for newbies is to steer them gently toward useful resources. Perhaps there could be a sticky for "Digital photography 101" on this forum.
Even though I took photography and cinematography in college (shortly after the Civil War), I have found this course to be useful:
The Great Courses
Cheers, Jock
