It's OK for the non-experts to be non-experts. The fact that they were asking means they are showing interest. Isn't that a good thing? Why be elitist about it?
Last October I was set up on the north rim of the canyon at Palouse Falls.* The camera was my restored-to-like-new Calumet C1 8x10, gleaming and looking very sharp paired with my wooden Zone VI heavy-duty tripod. Add the oversized blue and white Calumet dark cloth and it's a combination guaranteed to attract interested bystanders.
So I'm under the cloth and hear footsteps. The young lady is a student at Washington State University who is leading a sightseeing tour for about a dozen foreign exchange students. Would I mind saying a few words about what I'm doing to the group? Uh oh. I know it's time for the prepackaged short course on large format photography.
About an hour later, after having explained it all, and answered a bazillion questions, and let everyone have a GG look, and let them all dry fire the shutter once, and posed for pictures with everyone, and traded email addresses with a few, AND listened repeatedly as everyone apologized for carrying and using digital cameras, I finally got my exposures.
I wasn't upset one bit by any of this. It was a chance to gain some mindshare for traditional photography, not to mention also being a nice little exercise in international relations. And the coed conducting the tour? She told me she couldn't wait to get her own darkroom set up after she graduated. She was probably 21 years old and had absolutely no idea that film photography is dead.
All in all, a very pleasant afternoon.
Ken
* Palouse Falls State Park is
located in southeast Washington State, USA.