You mean like Scott Kelby. Bought a couple of his books a long time ago. I won't buy any again. His knowledge is extensive but it isn't worth reading it because of his attempts at "humour"
The
Dummies guy is someone called Deke McClelland. Apart from the 'humour' a worse failure is in the fact that almost everything I wanted to learn from it was to be found in 'another book by' which made the original (and only!) purchase an absolute waste of my pennies. The Adobe PS7 one was so opaque and unreadable that I didn't - couldn't. As I remarked before - it's vanished!
To be fair, I must admit that I have the type of mindset that learns easily from looking at reality but with difficulty (if at all) from manuals. This is borne out by my constant problems with video/CD recorders, gadgets to translate CDs to mp3 for the car, which results in stuff being bought and never used with any success. There
are some younger people around me who know this stuff, but I can never bring myself to trouble them for help. Thank God I learned to take snaps in the pre-d days! I think I'd have been put off right away had the first romantic interface been electronic! Much as an inflatable doll might crush an early, impressionable teen adventure, I suppose.
I have a self-portrait somewhere of myself with my first real camera - an Exakta Varex 11a. I was so skint and underfinanced at the time that I couldn't even buy a neckstrap: I had it laced with a piece of whipcord, the whole balanced on a tiny ball head on an even more ridiculous tripod someone gave me - probably because they wanted shot of it. Acorns... however, many just turn into natural fertilizer.
Rob C
P.S. Found the shot in question, but had to resize it. How much ego can anyone take? Guess who smoked in the 50s; observe the directorial digit. Thank God I chucked it in the 60s.