There are probably two distinct approaches to this subject: the pro and the am.
With film, and do forgive me for speaking up, from being one of the elder statesmen of the game and thus entirely independently of whether I was or was not any good, the facts of the matter are thus:
a. all amateurs I ever knew, myself included when in that blessed virginal state, talked tech. at the cost of anything else;
b. not a pro I knew or know was interested in such talk because we all understood that the business revolved around the photographer's different talents.
Now, there were decades of prior collective experience for both pro and am to draw upon for advice or information, and magazines ran routine articles on devĀ“n' print and eventually one gathered enough information to start doing something real, for one's self.
With digi, I think it is still in the very new phase, relatively speaking, and so many are still excited about it and certainly the internet has provided a channel for debate, showing off and bullshit of all types. Why imagine that the providers of fodder to the interested masses should not take advantage of the euphoria? And above everything else, the web has been a great place to learn how to do anything. For me, far better than any digi book of that type that I ever bought!
Since I more or less retired from the game around the time digital appeared in a serious way, I never did chat about it with other pros at all when I was active. I think that a lot of them still keep their opinions and experiences closely to their chests even today; all of it is valuable, so why give it away as a freebie to the competition? Seems a bit daft to me; however, I still know that in the end, it all comes down to the photographer's abilities. Enough of them have made money using toy cameras virtually as signatures! The name Richardson comes to mind for some reason. I wonder if he ever broke sweat about such matters as occupy many minds here...
Hell, I copied some 6x6 colour slides with my D700 the other day and I have had a lot of fun working them up and posting here on LuLa. The amazing thing is, regardless of the madness of such an unlikely technique, the images themselves turned out to be quite nice and without the accompanying tech. information one might not have suspected anything out of the ordinary had happened. Sort of goes to show something, I suppose.
Rob C