I still have this lens, and it’s still for sale. I may still put it up on eBay, but for now it’s available to anyone who wants an awesome professional Canon lens at a great price. It has never been used, and it has a bag, lens hood, manual, and USA warranty card. It was part of my 5D kit, so it came in a white unmarked box instead of the retail packaging.

Email me if you’re interested! jerry.knight@gmail.com (I already get tons of spam, so what’s a little more?)

Not much to say… It’s breath-taking. I look forward to lots of super pictures from this beautiful piece of technology. Last year, I never would have thought I would want or be able to go for this camera body. But then I got to shoot a lot more and found out how much there is to learn and how fun and rewarding the process can be.

I chose the 5D over the 40D because of the type of photography I have become interested in. Shooting weddings and portraits with Kathryn is so much fun, and it’s very different from other types of photography – landscapes, sports, nature, etc. The 5D is older than the 40D. It’s slower and lacks the new features the 40D has, but it has a full-sized sensor, and now that I’ve seen the difference in my own hands, I realize how big of a difference there is. The way I see it, early DSLR’s were given smaller sensors because at the time, 35mm sensors were next to impossible to produce and sell at a reasonable quality and price. Sure, cropped sensors give long lenses more reach, but eventually, I believe that all DSLR’s will be 35mm (or medium formats) and the 1.6x crop sensors will be a relic of the past.

This is the best way to get into the full-frame DSLR world. When the 5D’s replacement comes out later this year, it will definitely not have the same price (~$2100) for a rather long time.

Oh, and I’m doing the kit lens resale thing. I bought the 5D kit that comes with the EF 24-105mm f/4L IS lens. This is an absolutely phenomenal lens, but since I have and love the EF 24-70mm f/2.8L lens, I will be selling the 24-105, which can be bought for about $1050 at reputable dealers. I want to recoup enough for the lens to take a decent chunk out of the price of the 5D, but I’m not expecting to sell it for 100% of the normal price, so if you’re in the market for a great lens at a great price, let me know! I would rather sell it in person than resort to Ebay, but I will use Ebay if necessary.

http://www.thebschoolblog.com/index.cfm?postID=57

So the old push-the-shutter-button-halfway-to-focus thing? There’s a whole different way to do this that I never even heard of before. On the cameras that support it, (Yay, my 400D/XTi does!) you can make it so the useless AE lock or * button (useless if you shoot mostly in manual exposure mode) acts as the auto-focus control. This removes all focusing features from the shutter button, and it only releases the shutter. Putting the AF mode into Servo, you can either hold down the back * button and focus continuously while shooting, or you can one-shot focus. Servo mode also lets the shutter release even when the camera thinks the focus isn’t set, so no matter what, the shutter button will always release the shutter. It will take a bit of getting used to, but I can see how this way of auto-focusing can be much easier to control and get the focus right more consistently.

(Note: I’ve read that at least a few Nikon DSLRs allow the same functionality, and who knows, maybe they had it first. No matter.)

And, the joystick focus-point-selection trick also works on the XTi. Want the left focus point active? Hit the left arrow key. Want to get it back to center quickly? Hit the Set button. It’s no eye-controlled focus, but even if I had ECF, I would use this method whenever I need the focus point to be set. It doesn’t let me use my Set button for image quality, like I had before, but I rarely shoot anything but raw these days.

Focus has been one of the big areas in my photography that I’ve tried to improve, so these hidden tools might help me out a bunch!

I’m still learning… Half of it is seeing good compositions (very hard – takes lots of experience and talent, and starting out, not a small degree of luck), the other half is actually getting the camera to capture those shots as things happen. It’s usually rare to get a second chance to get everything right. It’s hard to not be critical of all of my duds and focus (hah!) on the shots that look decent, but here are some from the reception that I like. This was a very glamorous and photogenic wedding and reception.

They also announced a couple lenses that I’ll never own.

Overall, this announcement means that any 5D improvements won’t be announced until Photokina in September, which probably means nothing new will be available until the very end of 2008. This also means that Canon has no real answer to Nikon’s D300 + D3 launch (except the ridiculously expensive 1D(s) Mark III that no mere mortal could ever own). Disappointing, Canon. In the chess game between Canon and Nikon, this announcement is something like castling. Hope their strategy pays off.

And I had such high hopes for 2008.

It was a very unique experience. The course the ship took was on the boundary between vast wilderness and vast ocean. The only other boats were fishing boats and other cruise ships, and ships visiting the tourist towns add a few extra digits to the town populations. Many places simply would not exist if cruise ships didn’t stop there. Days were around 18 hours long, and the rest was dim twilight. All of these things were very foreign to me. The world is such a big place – and yet such a small place at the same time. It took a total of about 4 hours on an airplane to reach Vancouver. A hundred years ago, 4 hours was barely enough time to make it across the average county. The world moves so much faster now – almost too fast if you ask me. It’s good to take time off and admire creation.

Thanks, Mom & Dad for a great trip!

Incidentally, I’m really enjoying my Canon SD1000. Canon has similar models with image stabilization, but I wanted a Canon point & shoot that was as thin as possible. I’ve already demonstrated that I have a fairly steady hand, so I don’t miss the stabilization. The SD1000 has quite a decent sensor, and the firmware is zippy – faster than my S200 that now belongs to my sister. I’ve gone so long without a small everyday camera that I forgot how nice it is to have something I can carry everywhere. The XTi with the big honking (“honking” is the technical term) lenses doesn’t exactly fit in a pocket.

The biggest difference is the startup time. The old Drebel took over 2 seconds to get to where it could take a picture after turning it on or waking it up. At the time, it was just the way things were, but now Canon cameras can start up fast enough that you hardly can notice a delay. The published time is 0.2 seconds – faster than I can move my finger from the power switch to the shutter button. I don’t really notice much difference in picture quality, but most of their improvements are probably in high ISO exposures. The image buffer is much bigger, so I can take almost limitless JPEGs and 9 or 10 RAWs in a row.

One peculiar thing though – when taking a picture, after the mirror and shutter do their thing, there is an extra “ZZT” sound. It sounds remarkably like a film drive, which is a little absurd. I haven’t been able to figure out what part of the camera could be making such a sound.

When Joshua mentioned to me that he was thinking of selling his lenses, I had to seriously consider whether or not I could get them. The two lenses are a Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 L and a 70-200mm f/2.8 L, both phenomenal lenses. He wanted to upgrade to the Canon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 L IS, which is better for the outdoor photography he’s interested in than two non-stabilized lenses. This was my best opportunity to get into the world of professional lenses, so I now own my first two L lenses. Some have argued that the 10-22mm lens I have is constructed as L quality, but it lacks the official label. So now my lens bag contains:

• Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5
• Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 L
• Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L
• and, last and least (though still a great lens), Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS

Let’s hope I never need to shoot at 23mm! Hopefully, I’ll have some additional income to let me upgrade my camera body to something more qualified to sit on those lenses. I love my Drebel, but it’s definitely a mismatch!

-JK