Maintaining tens of thousands of pages of information would be a tall task for any organization. For one person it's an impossible task, though one I continue to attempt. Note that I'm referring here to just Z System books. Add in my DSLR books and Web pages and I'm not sure I can count that high when it comes to pages.
As I noted last month, I was immersed in a massive attempt to update my Z System books. My primary goal was to catch up to Nikon for the Z9 generation cameras, as they've been quite busy updating firmware for them. That task is now done (for the moment), though I still have a fairly lengthy list of things I'd like to add/change/revise in the books in the future.
Some of the updates I made are small in nature (a few things fixed and added) while several of them were massive updates including whole new sections, rewording, additional commentary, changes to supplemental files, and more. For most of September I was up to my elbows in cameras and firmware updates trying to make sense of Nikon's "sometimes we do, sometimes we don't" additions. Nikon even announced one feature in their own supplemental manual that wasn't actually in the new camera firmware! They were surprised when I told them that.
Some cameras haven't had anything other than bug fix firmware updates lately. So the following books were not in this update process and remain at their current version:
- Configuring and Using Nikon Zfc — current version 1.00
- Complete Guide to the Nikon Z6/Z7 — current version 3.01
- Complete Guide to the Nikon Z6II/Z7II — current version 1.04
- Complete Guide to the Nikon Z50 — current version 1.01
However, the majority of my books were updated. Books for which update emails have already gone out for:
- Mastering Nikon JPEGs — updated to version 1.06
- Mastering Nikon Customization — updated to version 1.03
- Complete Guide to the Nikon Z5 — updated to version 1.50
- Complete Guide to the Nikon Z5II — updated to version 1.01
- Complete Guide to the Nikon Z6III — updated to version 2.00 (does not include C2PA info, since it was redacted by Nikon)
- Complete Guide to the Nikon Z8 — updated to version 3.10
- Configuring and Using Nikon Zf — updated to version 2.00 and includes printable color PDF version
- Complete Guide to the Nikon Z50II — updated to version 1.03
If you think you didn't receive an update notice, please check your Spam/Junk folder for the email address from which you purchased the book. These emails do not come from me directly, but rather from my server using the client@e-junkie.com email address; you should mark that email address as safe in your mail program.
Finally, we have the Complete Guide to the Nikon Z9. My current book version is 5.00. It appears that a lot of you never got that update, so I'm going to re-trigger the update notice for that, even though that will trigger a big cost to me.
New numbering scheme. You'll note that with the updates I've moved to version numbering that matches the last firmware update Nikon made (e.g. firmware C3.10 for the Z8 3.10 book).
Many of you have responded with thanks and saying that you'd pay for updates in the future. At the moment I'm going to continue my current practices of sending out free updates when I make them. I believe that's the best practice, and it makes my already great books better.
Some of you suggest that I just do "supplements." You have Nikon for that, as that's exactly what they do when they add features to cameras. However, Complete Guides become incomplete if I were to follow this practice. Moreover, there's an awful lot of cross documenting that doesn't get done that way due to the interactions new features have with old. You'd now have to look in two places to get a complete picture. This was particularly true with the changes to Pixel shift shooting and Focus shift shooting, which now support other functions, but it occurs in way too many other places, as well. Moreover, someone just now buying a book for a camera with updated firmware would find an updated Complete Guide with Supplements confusing.
Some of you want a Concise Guide. I used to provide that when I was shipping tons of physical books a decade ago. The Complete Guides were too large to stuff in a camera bag, thus the need for a pocket companion. However, in the all-digital world where people are referencing the books on phones and tablets in the field, I'm not convinced that a Concise Guide is necessary. I'd invest time in better indexing and organization before writing a second, simpler book for a camera.
What's missing? I haven't produced a book for the Z30 or ZR. I'm not (currently) writing anything for the RED cameras. I can identify three subjects for which a Mastering Nikon [subject] would be useful. Who knows if Nikon will update the Z9 firmware, which would almost certainly require an update to that book. My general photography book is still in progress, and gets better with every pass I make on it. Some of the supplemental files need styling work—particularly the Excel ones—that I haven't had time to do.
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Bonus: I'm exhausted. I probably changed ten thousand things across 13 books in the past month (some were style conforming issues of my own creation). In doing so, I found two clear Nikon errors that I reported to the mothership (missing option and mislabeled option). Moreover, I found options that don't work as documented, also reported. It's clear to me that Nikon is having as much trouble keeping everything perfectly coordinated and documented across all the models, even with firmware updates. And they have a far bigger staff than byThom's sole employee ;~).
And we're not done. Nikon has already announced some firmware changes that are still coming (e.g. "grain option"), the ZR adds some new wrinkles that need to be explained, we still have some missing features (Nikon Imaging Cloud for the Z8), and the Z9 conspicuously hasn't had an update to match all the newer cameras.
But even once the Z9 generation has completely unfolded, we're still going to have cameras where a Custom Setting # is one thing on one model, and something different on another. We're still going to have some unexplained "can't set that customization on this camera" issues, and more.
The next technology cycle (e.g. EXPEED8) really should address all these things and build an easily conformed to platform for the future, but I'm not holding out high hopes there. The fact that Nikon is tripping over their own shoelaces trying to get things reasonably conformed in the Z9 generation suggests they haven't fully grasped the depth of their problem.
In terms of book updates, I'm not 100% sure what I'll do in the future. Some cameras are now getting more updates (and larger ones) than I originally anticipated, planned, and set pricing for. If that continues apace, I probably can't continue to match that pace without giving up other things, like reviewing products in a timely fashion, creating new works, and more. For the time being I'm going to continue the free updates policy, but as some of you just learned, sometimes those book updates lag the firmware ones, and I don't see that getting better.
