I've spent the past weeks on book updates. The following updates are now available:
- D500 Guide 1.02
- D850 Guide 1.03
- Z6 II and Z7 II Guide 1.03
Coming soon:
- Z9 Guide 2.10
Full details of what was updated are listed in a section at the start of each book. All four books have quite a bit of small, but important changes to them, and should be fully up to date with the current Nikon firmware.
If you purchased any of these books, updates are free. Didn't get the update? Please look carefully in your Spam/Junk folder, as the update link comes from an automated server, and many mail systems just don't like automated messages. If for some reason you still can't find the update, you can send me an email link. However, past experience with updates tells me that I'll have to set aside a day every couple of weeks manually sending out updates to people whose email systems nuked the message, or who waited too long to attempt the download, so be patient. I have to look all such requests up in the database, verify information, and force the server to send a link manually, all of which takes time. Note: if your request does not have your last name or the email address you ordered under, it will not be processed unless you provide the original PayPal transaction number. Again, such requests are processed when I have the time.
Coincident with these updates, I've now raised my prices on the DSLR books to reflect my current costs of providing them and publishing updates (for which I pay email and bandwidth charges). I had said I was going to do that earlier this summer, but gave everyone a brief reprieve.
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Bonus: Pulling out the D500 and putting it through its paces again while updating my book for it simply reminded me of how badly Nikon squandered their clear lead in the APS-C flagship realm. There's simply nothing particularly wrong with a D500—even five years after it was introduced—that wouldn't be corrected by having a reasonable lens set. As I've written elsewhere, the D500 is still one of the top APS-C cameras you can buy today. Not only does it have a better range of telephoto options that are well suited for sports and wildlife photographers than the Fujifilm X series (or even Canon EF or RF), but also in my initial analysis its focus system still holds its own against the newest comers. What the D500 doesn't have is any real support from Nikon (lame and late firmware updates, total lack of marketing after the launch, and no new stock available in much of the world).
This isn't the first time that Nikon's pulled this stunt. The D300 started this whole neglect thing on Nikon's part as someone at the helm decided that FX was what they really wanted to sell. I can also point to times in the film SLR era where Nikon did similar things.
Nikon management may wonder why their Imaging business tends to go through cycles. There's no doubt in my mind that this is partly internally caused. The modus operandi of the engineering teams is to force two, four, or eight year cycles for products, in a world that doesn't move in such a fixed way. The minute a product falls outside of the two-year pattern, it gets neglected not just by engineering but also by sales and marketing. DSLRs that fell into that category were the D600/D610, D750 (and now likely D780), D3x, D300/D300s, and D500. While Nikon was allowing that to happen, they often kept iterating consumer DSLRs on almost yearly cycles of near-nothing changes, a total waste of resources. Worse, if a new image sensor they needed didn't fall on their development schedule's cycles, they just skipped updating that camera.
One would think that once you captured a customer at the US$2000 mark, you'd want to keep them and milk them. I've tracked an almost 10% leak of D500 users, not to something else Nikon, but to competitor's products. So much for keeping customers. By not providing DX lenses, so much for milking them. As farmers, Nikon would end up with a fallow field with no animals, I suspect.
