I wanted to learn more about photography, I started asking an LLM and it helped me immensively. Definitely not the same realm but if you wanna pick up new skills, LLMs have tons of beginner friendly ways to explain things!

For optics through photography (not CCD operation or post processing which are vast subjects themselves) I highly recommend View Camera Technique 7th Edition and Scientific America Image, Object and Illusion as general audience applicable introductions.