You knew it was gonna happen.  A new camera body has hit the market from Canon.  It was only a matter of  time.  The latest?  The Canon 1D Mark IV!  (That’s four in Roman numerals…)  What’s it got going for it?  Lots of features and functions.  Everything is being discussed ad infinitum from Megapixels to frame rates, to video, to shutter speeds to ISO’s, and everything in between.  In the end, I’ve come to one conclusion:  the camera market is always changing, always advancing, and new gear is coming out all the time – from all the vendors.  Want some proof?  The Canon line-up of Digital SLR’s in its entirety is little more than 2 years old – with the oldest being the 1D Mark III which was introduced in early 2007.  Take a look at the current active line-up of Canon DSLR’s and their dates of introduction (from Wikipedia):

• EOS 1Ds mark III – Mid 2007
• EOS 1D Mark IV – Two days ago
• EOS 1D Mark III – Early 2007
• EOS 5D Mark II – Mid 2008
• EOS 7D – 2009
• EOS 50D – Mid 2008
• EOS Rebel T1i – 2009
• EOS Rebel XSi – 2008
• EOS Rebel XS – 2008

That’s a lot of cameras!  And that’s only their active lineup!  Others that have been “deprecated” (taken out of production) include the 40D, 30D, 20D, 10D, Rebel XT and probably more.  It’s funny actually that the two SLR’s I have owned are the XT and the 40D – neither of which is in production anymore.  And both of these cameras were absolute cutting edge on their release roughly 2 years ago and 5 years ago respectively.  The XT marked a new era of consumer grade SLR’s and the 40D marked a significant advancement to the 20D which was the most popular camera for serious enthusiast shooters for many years.  (Apparently, the 30D was only an incremental upgrade…)

A lot of people have been asking me:  “Are you going to upgrade?” What does the new MP count mean?  What about the video?  Do we need to be concerned about this?  Is it priced fairly?  What about this?  What about that?”  Lots of techno-babble is going around, and to be honest, I can’t keep up anymore.  For me it’s about one thing and one thing only:  Does it take good pictures?  In both the active and the deprecated line-up, the answer is a solid yes!

For what it’s worth, for me, I will continue to use my current camera until one of two things happens:

1. It breaks
2. My needs exceed its ability

Having said that, I am always interested in hearing what others think about the latest developments in the camera and photography industry.  It’s always fun to talk gear talk, and prognosticate, and “oooh” and “ahhh” over the latest gagedtry.  If I had a million bucks, then sure, I might look at all the stuff and buy every time a new one comes out, but until then…the above criteria fit the bill for me just fine.  What about everyone else though?  Does this make sense?  Am I being curmudgeonly?  Am I burying my head in the sand?  Is there something I am missing?  What are your thoughts on the “latest and greatest” in the camera world?  I’d love to hear, so sound off in the comments and via email – who knows, you may get your name featured on a podcast!  LOL

In the meantime, as always, Happy Shooting!   (We’ll see you back here on Friday with hopefully the latest podcast and some weekend nuggets (like a winner for the Flickr Monthly Giveaway!)

See, cameras, like any other device in todays technologically advanced world, can have flaws that are discovered after it is released to the public.  Most of the time the bigger players like Canon and Nikon keep these to a minimum, but nevertheless, things can happen.  Here is what happened to me.

Thus far my lens collection has consisted of glass that does not have built in image stabilization(or Vibration Reduction if you are a Nikon shooter).  So, when I had a shoot for work this last Tuesday, I thought it might be a good idea to go rent some glass and give it a whirl – to see if I could benefit from it.  Well, the oddest thing happened…whenever I was using the IS lens, I would hear a funny sound in camera.  It’s very hard to describe, but when I swapped lenses out, I didn’t hear the sound anymore.  I stopped using the lens and did the rest of the evening with my kit 18-55 lens.  When I returned the lens to the rental store, the guy told me that there have been reported problems with my particular body (the 40D), and I should check my firmware.

Sure enough, the firmware was at 1.5 or something, and Canon’s website verified that a newer release had been issuedto correct this very problem.  So, I downloaded the firmware and will be updating that for a tutorial next week.  (Make sure you tune in for that, because it’s not like I’ll have a chance to practice for it, and if I mess up, that will make for a funny tutorial!)  The moral here though is that cameras need maintenance too.

As we think about our work flow, we make sure our software is up to date, our operatig system is patched and secured, and hotfixes or system updates are applied…after all, we’re talking about all our work captured and saved on those precious hard disks.

Since Adobe, Microsoft, Apple, and the rest all have ways to automate our updates, that side of things can become rather ubiquitous.  We’ve set things up, and we know it will update itself when it needs to, so we don’t even think about it anymore.  it falls off our radar.  Cameras though, do not have a way of “auto-updating”.  Thus, we can’t let things things fall off our radar.  Letting things slide like that will only result in what happened to me on Tuesday – equipment failure or problems due to lack of current firmware.

As sort of a PSA, I am including here indications of what the latest firmware is for all the EOS cameras that are active in Canon’s line.  Check your firmware in camera and if it matches, you’re good to go.  If not, follow the link to get the latest firmware direct from Canon.  Mac is listed first, Windows is listed second:

Canon 1Ds Mark III – at version 1.1.2, dated 4/30/08

• Mac version
• Windows Version

Canon ID Mark III – at version 1.2.3, dated 4/30/08

• Mac Version
• Windows Version

Canon 5D – at version 1.1.1, dated 3/18/08

• Mac Version
• Windows Version

Canon 50D – brand new, no version updates available yet

Canon 40D – at version 1.0.8, dated 4/7/08

• Mac Version
• Windows Version

Canon 30D – at version 1.0.6, dated 3/18/08

• Mac Version
• Windows Version

Canon XSi – no firmware updates are available for the XSi – but software updates can be obtained too

• Mac Version
• Windows Version

Canon XTi – at version 1.1.1 dated 12/7/07

• Mac Version
• Windows Version

Canon XS – no updates are available for this camera on a current platform, but legacy WIn2K has some installers

• Windows 2000 downloads

Canon XT – at version 1.0.3, dated 12/1/07

• Mac Version
• Windows Version

So, there’s the complete list of all EOS cameras.  Hope you take a moment to check your firmware today.  Happy shooting and watch those apertures (and firmware).  We’ll see you back here tomorrow!

The reason I call this an incremental upgrade is because not much changes. The only things to change really are pixel count and screen size. I did a quick comparison chart of the bodies in the same range, so you can see where the “upgrades” are. Really, it seems more like they took this part of one body, that part of another body, and left other parts unchanged across the board (shutter speed, fps, ISO, etc…) Kind of a non-news item for me, but for those interested in entering the market, I can see where it’d be a decent option. Anyway, here’s my comparison chart to other Canon bodies:

For those interested in it’s specs, here’s a link to Canon’s official page for the new XSi.

Well, it turns out you can have one in your device, so your camera, laptop, cell phone, and other such equipment is safe. You can also carry two spares, provided each is stored in its own sealed plastic bag or the original packaging. Loose batteries, whether in carry-on or checked baggage, are no longer permitted. Lithium content is also restricted now to less than 25 grams. For now, it’s safe to say that virtually all cell phone, laptop, camera, and watch batteries fall well under the limit, including standard AA and AAA batteries. Whether this is per battery or a total of all batteries is somewhat unclear, but from what I have been able to gather, the aggregate total is in reference to the total Lithium content per battery. This is not a definitive piece of information but is the best I can determine from the travel sites (referenced at the end of this post) and other resources.

For those that are curious, I have been able to determine that Lithium content is based on a factor of 0.3 per cell multiplied by the rated capacity in ampere hours. If you look at the back of your batteries, it will tell you certain key information that can be used to determine your total Lithium content. For example, on my Canon XT, the back panel shows that it has a rating of 7.4 volts, with 720 Milliamp Hours. It’s the mAh that we need to use for determining how much Lithium we have. So, if I take the rating of 720 mAh and convert that to regular Ampere Hours (remember your metric system?) I get a value of 0.72 (720/1000). Now, I would use that 0.72 and multiply it by 0.3 to get my total lithium content. So, the XT/XTi batteries have about 0.21 grams of Lithium. Here’s a chart of common Canon cameras, their battery models, and the total Lithium content:

It should be noted here that the 1D Mark II series of the EOS family did not appear to be a Lithium battery, rather a Nicad battery, so it should be exempt from the new restriction. Regardless, at most, any EOS battery will yield considerably less than 1 gram, so with a total of 3 (one in the body and 2 spares), you are just a hair over 2 grams of Lithium (2.1 to be exact). When coupled with your laptop Lithium content, and cellular phone content, you should still be well within the parameters. As for other devices, I just checked my cell phone and laptop. The former (a Motorola v325i), and that has 880 mAh, so comes in at 0.264 grams ( 0.88×0.3). The laptop comes in a little closer as my Macbook Pro (15”) has an Li-ion battery that comes in at 60 Wh (no milliWatt hours here…), so the yield there is 18 grams of Lithium. I’d read elsewhere that the 17” MBP has a Wh capacity of 68 (or 20.4 grams of Lithium).

What it basically comes down to, is that you now must put your spare batteries in a plastic baggie, and can only tote those in your carry-on. (You cannot transport them in checked luggage.) Here’s my theoretical total Lithium content if I travelled with everything and the maximum number of spares:

Camera: 0.63 grams (0.21×3)

Cell phone: 0.78 grams (0.26×3)

Laptop: 54 grams (18×3)

For a grand total of 55.41

As a means of reference, here’s the links I visited in compiling this post:

Wall Street Journal Article

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119911051123859361.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Mac Owner’s Blog (for MBP 17” numbers):

http://stevenfettig.com/mythoughts/archives/000728.php

Safe Travel (note the <dot> GOV distinction)

http://safetravel.dot.gov/whats_new_batteries.html

Calculating Lithium Content

http://www.rosebatteries.com/pdfs/DOTshipping.pdf

When I get home this afternoon, I will set this up as a dedicated page so it won’t be archived and add it to the “blogroll” links on the side panel for easy reference. Happy Wednesday all, and go buy some baggies!

ETA: The dedicated page is now up and can be found here: Battery Lithium Content

So…I set out to look at the major features in the EOS line since that’s where my lenses are. Within my price range (under $1500) are the XTi, 30D, and 40D. I also included the 20D in my comparison because even though it’s been discontinued, it still is available through online auctions and various community forums for sale, and the spec sheet is readily available online (I used the specs from B&H). Given the number of options, even within the Canon line, I had to set some minimum. So, I told myself that in order to make it worth the expense, I would need to see at least 5 major features/reasons in order to justify the purchase. I defined a “major” feature/reason as something that either represented more than a 15% increase in numerical value, or a feature that was completely lacking in my current setup.

With my benchmarks set, and my expectations in place, I put together the following chart for the consumer/entry pro level EOS bodies that Canon offers:

The benchmarks indicated the following results:
• XTi – 2 features/reasons: Discarded
• 20D – 3 features/reasons: Discarded
• 30D – 5 features/reasons: Candidate
• 40D – 8 features/reasons: Candidate

With two pretty clear favorites, I looked at the differences between the two, and the 40D does seem to have enough of a distinction (3 features) from the 30D to justify the increased expense (Mega Pixels, screen size, and Frames/sec). What also tipped the scales for me in my decision was that since I don’t buy new bodies as regularly as some, as there have been 3 new releases since my last purchase. That being the case, I will probably be better served by getting the newest one so that it can last as long as my XT has (3 years).

For those with other Canon bodies, a similar system could be used to determine whether an upgrade is justified, depending on what you are looking for. For those with Nikon bodies looking to upgrade, the decision-making process should likely be weighed within your own DSLR system, but the principles used above could be applied equally there as well. As for Olympus, Pentax, and Sony – what are you guys smiling at? (Something tells me they will be following the lead of Canon and Nikon but at lower price points down the road…)