As many of you know, one of my great frustrations has been fitting the Lightscoop into the different manufacturers' hot shoes. Product designer Michael McParland and I have been at work on this for months, and have developed a solution that will serve all the current models we support... 35mm SLR Canon, Nikon, Pentax, and Fuji FinePix Pro models with interchangeable lenses. We've still got work to do for Olympus and Sony... In any case, we're closing out the existing line, with $5 mark-downs across the board — until we run out of the specific-fit units. We expect delivery by the end of April for the universal models.

The additional tooling costs for the new, universal Lightscoop are translating into a price increase... $34.95 on our web site.  We'll be taking orders for those once we get them in.

However, we also will be moving into the retail chain soon, where the "street" price is likely to be lower than on our own site. As our exclusive online reseller, for example, Adorama.com will sell the universal-fit Lightscoop for its original retail price of $29.95 when it is available. Volume purchasers can do that!

There's a nice story behind the Adorama deal... A sharp-eyed fellow at Adorama first learned about the Lightscoop when David Pogue included it as one of his cool, cheap gadgets on CNBC in December... "neat product," he said... and conversations continued over the past few months as we continued to work on the universal foot. We're excited by the opportunity!