gessman Loc: Colorado

If you can get past the fact that he's a screaming maggot who speaks broken English with a French accent you can probably learn a lot from him. I can't handle the dude myself. There's too many good alternatives...

jdubu Loc: San Jose, CA

Scot Kelby and Serge have done some videos together, however, I prefer Kelby One to Serge Ramelli. Serge is mostly about selling his packages that lean to post processing and actions, although he is a great photographer and I did get one of his packages... you can glean good info from just about any of his packages. Whether or not you can get enough to justify is another question.

There are so many videos and books and tutorials out there , but you have to be able to pick and choose what works for you. Look to Julianne Kost, as someone mentioned. She is excellent and on top of PS, being one of their training ambassadors. I've attended a few of her classes and she is clear, concise and articulate.

treadwl Loc: South Florida

Serge is entertaining. I do not feel is an exceptional photographer he relies largely on his post work to create a photo. If you listen to him carefully he says he is a creative artist. He does have some good ideas for post work and you can learn some Lightroom techniques from him. He is primarily a slick "used car salesman" he won't teach you how to use your camera. You should look into Steve Perry articles and videos. He will teach you technique.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

I've found his youtube tutorials quite good and useful.
--Bob

gmulberry

Check your local library for Lynda courses. My local library provides full online access to all Lynda courses. Free!

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

Cool.

sirlensalot Loc: Arizona

Not sure how high a level you are looking for, but Ramelli is not suited for me personally but he is knowledgeable. I much prefer the free tutorials by Neil Van Niekirk, a wedding and portrait photographer based in NJ. I really enjoy his views on using manual and how it relates to the on camera and off camera flash. He also offers workshops with limited attendance if you are so inclined.
Both Adorama and B&H have many videos on the subject of using manual easily accessed via youtube.

huntmj

I have a Ramelli video course and he often works with photographers from the USA. In my view he is ok but you may find his style and French accent a bit wearing after a few views of the video.

I also have other video courses and of those I think the creative live ones are good but do read the reviews first as some trainers on that site I find to be not very good for me.
There's lots on youtube if you can find someone you like.
Good luck

steveg48

Serge Ramelli deals mostly with post-processing as opposed to straight photography. He is adept at self-promotion. However, he has many free tutorials on you tube that can be useful. You can definitely pick up good information from these tutorials without purchasing his courses or presets. He would not be my first choice as an instructor.

aellman Loc: Boston MA

Or use the Pause and Back buttons.

Bipod

Funny how everyone thinks he's smarter than Thomas Edison because her's screwed in an
LCD lightbulb. And of course, he's a way smarter than Ansel Adams because film is Old
Technology--and a better photographer.

If museums and collectors disagree, well, they're old technology too. The opinions that matter are on
Instagram and Twitter.

Oh, you use a digital sensor! Then optics and sensiometry don''t matter. It's digital! It works by magic,
not science. No need to understand anything--just push buttons. Be a happy button-pusher!

Alas, a photographer isn't just a consumer of techmology, he is a producer of it (photographs).

A welder is a producer of welds. He needs to understand something about metallurgy--such as the
difference between steel and aluminum.. "Oh. but that involves mutli-syllable words! Can't I just
go to a seminar with Sybil the Soothsayer intead?" Sure you can: but you will never be a good welder.
Everything starts with correctly identifying the metal you're working on. For example, it's thin
sheet magnesium,
you might not want to put an oxy-acetylene torch to it (just a suggestion).

Automation makes it possible for cameras to capture images without a photographer. I own and use
several trail cameras. They work. But they capture images--not photographs. They are equally willing
to photography the back end of a deer as the front-end of deer. They don't have the concept "deer"--
they just detect motion.

Photography cannot be automated because its a form of communications and sometimes art. It says
something. Computers have nothing interesting to say. They are not even conscious. I haven't yet seen
one struggle when I take it to the recycler. Their marvelous at calculation, and at great effort and
expense can be made to play board games. Impressive, but then, so is a giant excavator. We don't
expect steam shovels to produce art.

Of course any company is going to hype it's products. If you make cameras, the unit cost will soar
if you try to increase the resolution. It's far more profitable to hype the technology: "buy our new
sub-minature format camera because it uses AI! And the lenses have nano-pixie-dust coatings!"

Consumers have always smiled at "scrubbing bubbles", "lemon-freshened borax" and "sparkling drop
ff retsin", But now they no longer smile--they believe.

The difference now is that all the technology companies are hyping technology: billions of dollars
worth of adverstising, fake reviews and bought journalism. And so consumers buy into it.

The "Pepsi Generation" was good ad campaign, but nobody thought (I hope) that there was such
a thing. That's because Coca-Company was sending out a very different message. But now Google,
Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Nikon, Canon and Sony are all putting out the same message: more
technology is always better! More automation is always better! Newer is always better!

But of course, it has to be admitted that technology has solved most of our problems. There is
no more global warming. Airliners no longer crash. Cars accidents are unknown. Every American
has access to good public transportation. Power blackouts are unknown. Hurricanes, floods and
wild fires no longer endanger our cities and towns. Cancer has been cured and so has the common cold.
The nuclear threat and terrorism have been eliminated. And thanks to digital voting machines, democracy
has finally triumphed around the world.

But that's not quite true, is it? New York County just declared a measles epidemic. A vaccine
for measles has been available since 1963. But parents don't understand the science behind
vaccines, so they believe crap they read on the Internet and don't vaccinate their children. They
can't be persuaded, because they don't understand the difference between a Youtube video and
a journal article in JAMA or The New England Journal of Medicine.

Technology is only useful when when people understand the science behind it.. Otherwise, it's just
another form of voodoo. You cannot know what you are doing unless you know what you are doing.

Fewer and fewer Americans bother to learn science and mathematics---the foundation of all technology.
(And when they do learn math, it's only applied math and the "cookbook approach": "if you see this
formula, use this integral"). Anyone can teach that--but it takes a mathematician to teach proofs.

Engineer schools have proliferated -- there are now something like 4000 in the world!---but most (even
in the USA) no longer bother to teach thermodynamics to electronics engineers. (Ever wonder why so much
electronic stuff overheats?). Today most EEs are really "Legoneers", they only know how to plug digital
inputs into outputs. It's getting very hard to find an EE who can design a power supply that won't catch
fire or a radio that will work. Heaven help the company that needs to design an antenna (ask Apple about
the iPhone 4).

Well, we don't need power supplies or radios anymore--that's "old technology". Heck,
there are companies who well sell you a "digital TV antenna" to replace your "old analog antenna"
(there is nothing more analog then an antenna).

There's been another huge change: now, thanks to software and firmware, the costs of increasing
complexity are now hidden. If you add another gear to a clock, you just increased the parts count
and the unit cost. But if you add a line of code to a program, you don't increase the parts count
unless it fills up all the RAM. The only limit on complexity is the number of RAM chips you can
pack into the box.

The old rule of programmers was "K.I.S.S" -- Keep It Simple, Stupid. Because a simple program
can be validated: mathematically proven to be correct. More complex source code can only be
inspected. But soon it reaches the point that all the King's horses and all the King's men cannot
tell whether humptydumpty.exe is correct. (If you don't believe me, ask the crew of Lion Air
Flight 610.)

Both elecro-mechanical elevators and digital computers are examples of "finite-state machines".
A elevator might have 20 or 30 different states. But it's common for computers running software
or firmware to have billions of states.. Some have so many that if you tested them by entering each
state for 1 second, the sun would burn out before you finished. So they are impossible to
exhaustively test. The only hope is have a modular design, where test jigs can be written to test
each module separately.

But the emphasis in the technology industry isn't on modular design or error-free code, it's on getting
the product to market quickly and cheaply. Tech products have a limited shelf life--if you wait to long
to release it, it's obsolete. And the kind of strict discipline and accountability requrired to run a good
software development shop are very rare in American corporate culture. It used to be found in the
telecom industry and defense contractors, but even that has faded.

Consumers know better than to buy nuclear reactors (or is it just that they can't afford one?).
But they buy and rely on software and firmware without giving it a second thought. They even
trust their life to it. I'm sure than none of the passengers--on that doomed flight thought that
software was going to kill them that day.

The combination of smart devices and stupid or deluded people is extremely dangerous. A workman
must know the limitations of his tools. No technology is immune from Murphy's Law. Complexity
always comes at a cost. Do not trust a wild animal or a computer--it's not your friend. Trust only
what you understand well enough to know when it's gone haywire--and what to do about it.

A camera or home computer is unlikely to kill you (unless it burns the house down), but it can
waste enormous amounts of time and money. If its' connected to the Internet, it can make you
the victim of theft, fraud, extortion, blackmail or espionage.

Blind reliance on technology and neglect of science and education is the quicked route to a Dark Age.

Already, for many Americans, technology comes from "somewhere else" not their town, and maybe not
their state. Probably your local public library does not subscribe to any science or engineering journals.
Probably it has books on science and mathematics (history, biographies, "fluff" and "hand-waving")
but not of science and mathematics. There was a time when American school children used a book
full of proofs--Euclid's Elements of Geometry -- as a textbook. Dated as that work is, it contains
real, live mathematics.

According to the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL), 23% of Californians "lack
basic prose literacy skills". That's in the nation's most populous state and the home of "Silicon
Valley" (where these days, nothing is manufactured).

The goal of progress isn't to enable everyone to be ignorant and waited on by machines--the way
a helpless, bloated queen bee is fed and cleaned by worker bees. It to make everything better, safer and
more controllable, so that events like Chernobyl, Fukashima, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, Lion Air
Flight 610 and Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 become a thing of the past--like the Black Plague.

Instead, we are afflicted by a plague of software bugs, endangering the very fabric of our society:
transportation, communications, banking, defense. At the individual level, our security, privacy and
finances are being compromised. But people put their faith in invisible beings and/or Technology--
because that is what they are told to do---rather than in themselves.

Photographers at least should be able to control their own destiny. A least they have a choice: all
photography is optical, but it is only chemical, electrical, electronic or computerized if you want
it to be.

Even with a microprocesor controlled digital camera (an "embedded system") you have choices:
you can insist on buttons and knobs, not menus. You can insist on an optical viewfinder (that
doesn't drain the battery). For that matter, you can insist on standard batteries. You can insist
on an industry standard for lens mounts and raw mode file format.

The monopolists and technology robber barons are counting on you to be passive consumers,
buying whatever they chose to make available. Don't. Vote your dollars for something that
is reliable, repairable, understandable and taht will last for decades (like your father's,
grandfather's and great-grandfather's cameras did). Tell them you want the Apollo Program,
not the Space Shuttle.

rcarol

Congratulations. That is clearly the longest rant that I've seen on this site.

neco Loc: Western Colorado Mountains

I bought a Lightroom course from Udemy and I thought that move too quickly, too.

joanloy Loc: St. Louis, MO

What a lot of words to say nothing of value.

Deanie1113

Anthony Morganti is great You Tube teacher. He goes slow and assumes nothing. His classes are free forever. Also check out Tony Northrup's book "Stunning Digital Photography." It's got readable chapters, of course, but there are over 100 free videos connected to the book.