I do shoot Oly and Oly’s SHG glass is expensive, but it’s also not all that different from Nikon’s high end zooms. The wide angle and telephoto are actually cheaper. The sweet spot is their HG glass. No one makes anything that compares to the 12-60 and 50-200. If it’s what you are looking for it’s a fantastic deal. Oly is all about the glass. The recent bodies have gotten much better, but still need some work. *cough* C-AF & Low light AF *cough*

Well that will be after I upgrade my *ist DS to a K7 once it drops in price a bit. Weather sealed, full metal body, improved auto focus, shake reduction, super quiet shutter, not bloated in size… so I’d say Pentax is on their game right now in bodies as well as lenses.

I’ve read your blog for quite a few years off and on. Never seen you try a Pentax. Maybe you should give the K7 and a limited a try. ^_^

Sorry to barge in, but thought I would give you some input on the 5D vs 5D mk II decision. I have both and use them for work and I love both cameras.

The 5D mk II is an excellent camera, it has a lot of features that makes it a bit more user friendly than the original 5D (automatic or manual iso settings, photo shooting mode (portrait, landscape, B&W) change is on a side button for quick access, expanded iso (3200, but with an expansion to more than 20000..not really necessary as it has a lot of noise) and the video function is pretty cool. The sensor cleaning is a big help if you are editing a lot of pics as well.

Saying all that though, if you aren’t using it for a heavy workload, the 5D itself is a damn fine camera. I used it solidly as my main camera body for a year and loved it. As Jeff said, unless you are printing massive pictures or using it for work you will be just as well saving some cash and getting the 5D.

In terms of megapix, a lot of it is gimic to help sell new camera models to people who shoot as a hobby, if you are just shooting jpeg and putting it on a computer or making prints up to A4 you don’t need a 21 mega pix camera, a 6 or 8 would do (I used to get by fine with an 8 megapix camera). The only real need for big megapix is for large prints in exhibitions, or if you plan selling your work to magazines or agencies. For newspapers jpegs are fine, for glossy mags or agencies you need big megapix cameras and you have to shoot in RAW so when you finish your edit you don’t lose so much image quality.

Hope this helped…

Will

Send me an email and I’ll bounce you back a high resolution version for your wallpaper.

Jeff

the PotD “fujiisan with cloud cap” is simply magnificent. Do you have it available as a screensaver with higher pixel count than what is available on Flickr?
So far I’m using your screensaver of the shinkansen at ShinYoko station (using it already many years) but it is about to be replaced by this one.

Greetings from Tokyo,

J.

I do agree that for pros shooting medium format digital, more pixels is better. The larger sensors can absorb the increased pixel density while maintaining relatively large individual photo sites.

You’ve got some really nice work on your website. Thanks for sharing.

Jef

Nice to hear from you!

Unless you are into shooting video, or printing your photos at ridiculously large sizes I would suggest you buy a used 5D.

If the auto-focus on the 5DMII was upgraded from the original 5D I might lean towards the new version. But since it is the same, I myself don’t see the need to spend all that extra money for more pixels.

The original 5D is an incredibly capable tool, and with the money you save you can either invest in some lenses, or just bank the difference.

Hope this helped.