First, I’ll reply to a commenter, who asked a reasonable question about why you can’t just attach a filter to the Panasonic Lumix LX5’s lens rather than having to use a conversion adapter. The answer has to do with the nature of the lens on the LX5, which extends outward when you turn on the camera. If you attached a filter directly to the lens, it would block the lens, and the camera could not operate. You see this situation if you turn on the camera in recording mode with the lens cap attached — the camera comes to a stop and gives you an error message about removing the lens cap.  So, you need to attach the conversion adapter, which provides a space into which the lens can extend, and the filter or wide-angle lens is attached at the end of that space, beyond the end of the lens.

Now, on to the Amazon situation.  I had been quite concerned because Amazon.com was listing the LX5 book as “unavailable.”  I thought at first that was some glitch with Amazon’s inventory or computer system, but this morning I e-mailed my customer service rep at Lightning Source, the print-on-demand company.  I expected her to say there was some issue with Amazon, and they would fix it.  To my surprise, though, she replied within a couple of hours, telling me that the book had been pulled from production because of an error with a corrupt font. That was a surprise, because the pdf file with the book’s text had passed all of the technical tests before being approved for printing.  I don’t know how the error cropped up further down the road.  Anyway, the printing experts at Lightning Source somehow fixed or worked around the problem, and the book was back in production by the time I got my response.  The rep suggested I send a revised text file anyway, though, to avoid any future problems.  I prepared a new file tonight, and I’ll probably upload it tomorrow, if it can be done without interrupting the printing process any more.