Am I too old school and picky? Locked

I'll assume the response you speak of was in the Nikon SLR Lens forum? If so, I would say there's nothing terribly wrong with your views of what constitutes photography in the digital age. You get a little wrapped around the axle over things like cropping but I'm also of the opinion that spending too much time in the digital darkroom suggests the image was not captured optimally, although there will be times when it's just not possible to get the perfect capture you speak of. We have to also accept the limitations of our digital cameras at times but this is no different to the good old days of film. Some have suggested Ansel Adams would love PhotoShop if it were around back in the day. Although he was an excellent photographer it's well known that he was also extremely gifted in the darkroom, well beyond simply running the negatives and prints through chemicals.

My digital darkroom skills are pretty weak, PhotoShop makes my head hurt but I can make it work when I have to. My most ambitious uses of PS were some panoramas stitched from 10 to 12 images, something that was pretty hard to do back in the days of film. I don't consider cropping the ultimate sin either. When I'm out shooting I try to see the image I'm about to capture in my mind. But that doesn't always work for various reasons. And with panoramas I feel it's better to have some extra real estate in the finished capture to allow tweaking of the final composition.

My darkroom manipulations are generally limited to white balance corrections and cropping if it corrects something I overlooked during capture. I try to avoid sharpening and noise reduction. And as I age it seems to get harder to keep the cameras level so some small amount of tilt correction will get applied. I'm also a big fan of software that corrects lens anomalies because it can make a less than stellar lens shine when used properly.

Do I think digital manipulation is overdone at times? Absolutely. Do I lose sleep over it? No.

I would consider myself old school too, trying to nail the capture with every press of the shutter, but don't feel the need to self-medicate when I fail. It's a hobby for me, when it stops being fun I'll sadly put the cameras away and look for something else although I hope that day never comes.