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Canon 5D on sale - Is a new model release around the corner

The Canon 5D, which is considered to fall within the "professional" segment of the camera market, is currently being offered widely for less than $2000 (body only - previously sold for $3000), so the photography blogs are abuzz with speculation that Canon is about to release an update of the camera within the next few months and is now trying to clear inventory.

The 5D was released way back in August 2005 so is definitely due for an update. If it follows its big brother, the 1D, it will be called something like 5DII. So if you are in the market for a new camera and ready to move up to a "pro-level" camera, then you have a few options to consider. Decisions, Decisions!

For a start you could wait for the new release of the 5D, whatever it will be called, so that you don't miss out on any of the new bells and whistles. But of course you will need a bigger budget for that. It's obviously going to be at least $3000.

Or you could go for the recently-released Canon 40D, the high-end "pro-sumer" (professional at the consumer level...get it?) camera that is an exceptionally good camera available with lens kit for around $1500, or as a body-only deal for around $1,000.

Or you go for the 5D at around $2000. Why? The main thing you're going for is that the sensor in the 5D is a "full-format" sensor. The sensors in the 40D and Rebel series cameras are not full-sized sensors so your images in fact suffer from some cropping. This effect is more pronounced at the lower end of your lens' focal range. Just imagine the light coming through the lens and falling on the sensor but with the outer edges of the light being wider than the sensor itself. So with the 5D you get the full focal range of your lenses, as well as all exceptional technology of the camera itself.

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Samoan Youth

This young man was preparing with his friends for his moment of fame on the stage at the Samoan Village at the Polynesian dance festival called Pasifika in Auckland in March this year. Samoan Youth Canon EOS 20D 1/30sec at f/20 ISO 200 Canon 70-300mm lens at 300mm More photographs from the same Pasifika Festival day can be found in my new post, Faces of Pasifika 2007 — A Day at Auckland's Pacific Festival .

A Grunge Botanical Collection — Five Painterly Garden Pieces

Over the past few weeks I've been building out a small collection of botanical pieces using photos taken in my garden here in Irvine, California, (and in one case out on a hiking trail here in SoCal), and using AI assistance to give each one a grunge, painterly treatment — dark, richly textured backgrounds with warm gold light breaking through, turning garden snapshots and trailside finds into something closer to old varnished still-life paintings than straight photography. Here's the full set so far. Epiphyllum oxypetalum — Queen of the Night, Painterly Botanical Art A night-blooming cactus that flowers just once or twice a year, for a single night — three blooms at different stages caught in one frame from a night it happened in my garden. Kangaroo Paw — Painterly Grunge Botanical Art Australia's velvety-flowered native, grown in my own garden, its stems reaching in different directions the way it actually grows rather than posed into symmetry. ...

A Steindachner's Ebony Tarantula at Crystal Cove

I crossed paths with this fellow on a hike at Crystal Cove State Park this morning, along the Fenceline trail. I posted it to iNaturalist as soon as I got home, and within a few hours had it confirmed by several people: a male Steindachner's ebony tarantula ( Aphonopelma steindachneri ). Turns out the timing wasn't a fluke. Males of this species leave their burrows specifically to search for mates between July and October, so this was a textbook-timed encounter rather than an unusual one — good to actually check that before assuming, since my first instinct was that a July sighting seemed early. After his photo session, I gently nudged him with a stick and he scurried off the trail into the chaparral, safe from being run over by a mountain biker or stomped by an arachnophobic hiker.  Aphonopelma steindachneri is native to the coastal ranges of Southern California and northern Baja California, and it's one of the tarantulas you're genuinely most likely to run into ...