Earlier today I set up my first sale on eBay — the first time I have temporarily reduced the price of a book.  I did this because I ended up with more copies of the Sony RX100 II guide book than planned.  I ordered a quantity of them at a time when Amazon.com was not keeping the book steadily in stock, but that problem cleared up and the book has been constantly available directly from Amazon.  So, in order to reduce my own inventory, I have reduced the price of the paperback version of the book to $18.95 for one week.

I don’t know if I will be having any other sales.  I will see how this one goes.  Anyway, if you’re interested in this book, it’s available for $18.95 through the first week in July.  For more information about the book, please see its information page at this site.  Here is a link to the sale at my eBay store.

In all of my camera guide books I include a section on using external flash. With the cameras that have a flash shoe, like the Sony DSC-RX100 II, the Sony DSC-RX10, the Fujifilm X10, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX7, and others, there is no problem attaching an external flash unit, because each of those cameras has a flash shoe. But some other cameras that I write about, including the Sony DSC-RX100, the Nikon Coolpix P600, and the Canon PowerShot S110, do not have a flash shoe, so there is no way to attach or connect an external flash unit.

With those cameras and others like them, you can use an external flash unit that has a built-in optical slave capability, or you can use an external flash unit along with a separate optical slave device. I thought it would be useful to do a video that demonstrates how this works, so I put together a short demonstration using the Nikon Coolpix P600 camera. Here is the video:

For more information about specific cameras and using external flash units with them, please see my guide books for those camera models.

So far, I have written camera guide books only for advanced compact cameras like the Sony DSC-RX100 II, the Nikon Coolpix P600, the Fujifilm X100S, and several others. I have not yet done any books about cameras that are included in smartphones, like the iPhone camera. I have read a good deal about the Nokia Lumia 1020 phone, though, with its camera that takes 38-megapixel photos. I’m not planning to do a book about this camera at this point, but I have been playing around with one for the past few days. Today I set up my water drop photography equipment to give the Lumia 1020 a test run, just to see how the camera works using a familiar scenario.

I think it did pretty well. I put the results into a SlideShare presentation, which you can view by clicking the link in this sentence.

If there is interest in a book about the Nokia Lumia 1020’s camera, I might consider it for a future project.

As of today, Photographer’s Guide to the Nikon Coolpix P600, the newest full-color camera guide book from White Knight Press, is available for purchase in a paperback edition. This 409-page book is currently listed for sale at Amazon.com. You can find the book by searching at that site or by clicking on the button here:

The P600 guide book will be available in downloadable versions for smartphones, tablets, and other devices within the next two weeks.