Rightly or wrongly my suspicion of photographic clubs was somewhat reinforced yesterday when I visited the Bird of Prey Centre at Newent in Gloucestershire. Whilst waiting for the flying display to start I found myself standing near a group of several photographers (with equipment which if sold on the second-hand market would probably pay off most people's mortgages) and couldn't help overhearing the conversation, which was very much along the lines of "At our club most people prefer
blah blah blah .........I personally use a Nikon/Canon
blah blah blah body and a 150-600 f3.5
blah blah blah. Well of course the problem with the Nikon/Canon
blah blah blah is that.........." i.e. it was all about the equipment and technicalities, no-one seemed in the slightest bit interested in the birds or how to get the best shots of them. I'm a pretty scientific/technical/geeky sort of guy and even I found their conversation boring.
Well obviously Nikon owners are a bit clueless.
Joking aside (I nearly switched to them) that's unfortunate and hasn't been my experience of clubs. Any hobbies can generate a lot of talk of equipment as a geek you should appreciate that - look at astronomy forums or photographic forums, even walking forums the gear sections are always close to having the most traffic. I've only ever heard banter about different brands and most people are more interested in technique and what you have to do to get a type of shot. On Sunday I'm going to a RPS advisory panel, there will be little if any interest in equipment, it's all about the pictures.