Since buying a 300D, I spend a lot of time reading the Canon forums at dpreview.com. To save everyone the trouble of reading all 100,277 messages, I’ll sum it up for you…

• Spend around $1,600 on a long lens so you can take pictures of ducks. Lots of them.

• Spend around $1,600 on a wide lens so you can take pictures of flowers - really close-up.

• Argue endlessly that the Canon 300D is a “professional” camera - or that it’s not.

• Take a macro shot of your eye and wait for everyone to respond with “WOW!”

• Find a misprinted document from Canon stating that FEC is included. Then demand that a firmware upgrade is released IMMEDIATELY! which “fixes” it by enabling in-camera FEC dammit! It doesn’t matter that you’d never even heard of FEC when you bought the camera.

• Take another picture of a duck. Use a squirrel if a duck is not immediately available.

• Use the phrase “L glass” frequently, even if you don’t know the difference between that and some cheap Tamron knockoff.

• Ask which lens is better, the 50-300mm f4 zoom or the 20mm 1.8 prime.

• Make sure you always include an exhaustive list of your equipment in each post, but never post any actual photographs.

• Buy the 50mm 1.8 and talk about how it’s now your favorite lens. And what a deal at only $70!

• Buy the 16-35L and talk about how it’s now your favorite lens. Don’t mention the fact that it cost you nearly $1,400

• Whatever you do, don’t talk about capturing wonderful images. Stick with arguing incessantly about equipment details.