I sympathise with your plight!

My view is: if I can't make some halfway decent pictures with Vue 6 Easel (the cheapie version) -- and it's beginning to look like I can't -- then forget anything more expensive.

They are, after all, just expensive tools, not magic wands... and if I can't learn to tighten a screw with a simple screwdriver, what chance would I ever have with a... with a.... ummm... I wish I hadn't started this sentence now.

"If I were a shadow, I know I wouldn't like to be half of what I should be."
Mr Otsuka, the old black tomcat in Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami)