All questions asked must receive a bunch of completely pointless answers.
Most recent example: I discussed how my camera was massively overexposing pictures. I explained that I shot in aperture-priority mode, meaning that I set the camera’s aperture and the camera will select an appropriate shutter speed. Shooting a bright white sign in direct sunlight, with an f/4.5 aperture, it selected a 1/45 second shutter speed. This was wildly inaccurate. I also walked through a, “You might think what I first thought” thing where I debunked a few of the answers I knew I’d get: that I’d maybe shot at ISO1600 or something, and that I had maybe switched to Manual mode by accident. I explained that neither was the case. I also explained that I ended up switching over to full-manual mode, where I got some great shots, so that it seems to be a problem with metering.
A few people gave helpful answers. But I also got a lot of replies like, “Your shutter speed was far too low. It should have been 1/1,000th of a second.” (Thanks, Sherlock. Do you understand aperture-priority?) Someone else suggests that I was maybe in manual mode by accident. Despite having already stated that I wasn’t, I explained that I had last been doing night exposures, so manual mode was set for a 30-second exposure. “I’d definitely have noticed,” I explained. Another helpful person suggested that I could have just switched to manual mode and set an appropriate shutter speed myself. Thanks for not answering the question of what was wrong and not even reading the whole thing, where I mention that I did just that in the end.
And I started a huge argument in another thread by pondering aloud why no one ever made a zoom lens faster than f/2.8. I wondered if it was some physical limit that I didn’t understand. People are now talking about how on the 5D you can use ISO6400 which offsets the need for a fast lens, and arguing over whether or not an f/2.0 zoom for a non-35mm body is the same as if it were for a 35mm body, and whether f/2 really means f/4. And then someone argues about, “What is ISO, really?”
Seriously, be careful about asking questions on the Internet. Most of the answers you get probably won’t answer your question at all.
I’ve noticed the same thing. A similar thing that bothers me is an answer that starts with ” I haven’t tried it myself but ”
That usually indicates a suggestion is coming that will take a lot of work to try but even though is sounds good has a low probability of actually fixing the problem. For this reason I try to avoid posting answers that I haven’t actually verified myself. I try to anyway.