I love this photo from the wedding shots:

Canon are planning on pretty much replacing their whole range of compact digital cameras this year (I think they plan to release something like 40 new models). I suspect the announcements will start in February, with the first big camera show of the year.

Looks like the onslaught of new models from Canon has begun.

http://www.dpreview.com/

The Canon Powershot Pro1 is an intriguing camera! It's larger than my Canon Powershot G3, but has a 28-200mm equiv. zoom lens (versus my current 35-140mm equiv. lens). The extra wide angle would be particularly useful to have. Realistically, I'm tempted to keep my G3 and possibly get myself a full-blown SLR, which I could use when I want to have every possible option. The G3 could still go with me when I travel due to its relatively light weight and size, while the SLR would be the no-compromises über camera.

The real question is whether Canon will announce a successor to the EOS 10D. DPReview said, about the 10D: A year on and just as they did with the EOS-D60 Canon announced its successor, the EOS-10D two days before the start of the PMA show. In total it's three years since the original EOS-D30 was announced (although only two since it hit the streets). Just a few weeks more and we'll know.

The real question is whether Canon will announce a successor to the EOS 10D

I'm 100% sure that Canon will either replace the 10D this year, or maybe release a camera between the 10D and 1D. I replacement is more likely though, given how little the gap in functionality is between the 10D and the Digital Rebel/300D.

However, reading between the lines on the dpreview forums my guess is that it won't happen until the end of the year. I think they've just got too much being announced at the moment, with the 1D MkII, a couple of new lenses and heaps of digital compacts. They aren't likely to want to release a new 10D at the same time.

my guess is that it won't happen until the end of the year

I'd imagine the 10D successor will have some specs comparable to the 1D Mark II, like an 8 mpixel sensor, but probably not support the 8 frames/sec and 40 frames in the buffer of the 1D Mark II. Heck, I'd be thrilled with 3-4 frames/sec and a 10 frame buffer. If (big if) they're using the same sensor on both camera bodies, then it would make sense for the initial production run to go to the 1D Mark II and for the 10D successor to come out in time for Christmas.

On the other hand, you could argue that Canon was smart to get the Digital Rebel (a.k.a. EOS 300D) to market months before Nikon has a D70 to compete with it. I'll bet they want to do something similar in the next market segment, as Nikon will, at some point, have a successor to the D100.

Following up on this old thread, I think I will be buying one of those digital slave flash units in the very VERY near future (i.e., I realized that I absolutely must have one before I go to my next convention at the end of the month, which means I have only about ten days to get one into my hot little hands).

Dapper Dan, do you know of anything that is a better value than that Digislave DSF-1 you linked?

Edit: Or should I be getting that Phoenix unit? I like the bracket idea... Hmmmmmmm....

do you know of anything that is a better value than that Digislave DSF-1 you linked?

I've never used any of these things in person, so it's difficult for me to say whether any of them work at all. On the other hand, you can't go too wrong for $50. Personally, I recently bought myself a Nikon D70 with the kit lens and the SB-800 flash. It's just astonishing how many nifty things you can do with this camera. But, that's a story for another thread.

In short, I see this slave flash thing as a stop-gap measure to tide you over until you're ready to drop bigger bucks on a shiny new camera (as discussed in the other thread about available-light photography). If/when you get something like a Canon G3, then you're getting a camera that can support a Canon-branded flash. (Likewise, if you buy a nice Nikon, you can use a Nikon-brand flash.) Generally speaking, the same-brand flashes can do more sophisticated things than off-brand flashes, which again, in general, means that your pictures will be more likely to come out properly exposed.

But, that's a story for another thread.

Don't keep us waiting * too* long, as I'm itching to get me one of those D70 kits....

I've been thinking of making a whole "I love my D70" web page, but that's not going to happen until things calm down at work. In a nutshell:

- The camera is just fast. You turn it on. It's on right now. No waiting. You shoot. You press the button and it shoots. You press again, it shoots again. I've never once had to wait while it was writing out to the memory card, and I shoot exclusively in RAW mode.

- The 18-70 kit lens is pretty good. The extra wide-angle is quite useful (27mm equiv.), and the focusing is fast and quiet. Focusing on one person in a crowd can be an exercise in frustration, however. There are three focusing modes, and none of them are "just use the center focusing target and ignore the other four." Maybe I'm just picky, but I've found myself needing focus manually on far too many occasions, and the screen isn't one of the traditional ground glass / split screens that makes it easy to focus.

- The SB-800 flash is the best thing since sliced bread. You can put the camera into "commander" mode and the flash into "remote" mode. You can then hold the flash in your left hand, the camera in your right, and everything pretty much just works. The flash also comes with a frosted white dome thing that gets you a smoother light distribution if you want it. You also get filters to match the flash to incadescent or flourescent lights. The camera, by default, tries to use a slower exposure such that the flash is only a "fill" flash. If that's what you want, it does it brilliantly. If you want a bright foreground and a dark background, using the camera's tight 1/500 flash sync, you have to put the camera into manual mode.

- Internet weenies (particularly on the dpreview.com forums) complain about moire and about backfocus. I've never seen moire, ever, but I shoot RAW, which is one of the known ways to avoid the problem. Backfocus hasn't been a problem for me. The finicky focus system, when it works, is spot on. When it doesn't work, it's usually quite sharp, just not on my intended subject. The focus system will highlight the focus zone that it thinks it's using. This is usually fine. The real trick with this camera is when you realize that pressing the button is free, so you just start shooting like you're a member of the paparazzi. Shoot 30 pictures and one or two will turn out good in the end.

Edit: adding some more information, now that I've had a chance to think about it.

- One annoyance of the D70 camera, and of any D-SLR, is dust. When you change lenses, you allow dust to get on the sensor. This manifests itself as fuzzy, out-of-focus blobs on your pictures. You can usually Photoshop around it, but you often need to clean out the fuzz if you like to change lenses. One thing the Nikon does apparently better than its competition is that you can force the mirror lockup and clean out the camera without it needing to be plugged into the wall. I bought a can of compressed air, and that seems to be doing the job nicely.

- Another genius feature is the automatic ISO adjustment. I have it set such that it will stick with ISO 200 (its minimum) until the automatic exposure time that the meter demands would be longer than 1/30 second. At that point, it will start pushing the ISO until 1600. Only after that will it go with a shorter exposure.

- At some point, I intend to buy myself Nikon's 10.5mm fisheye lens. It's equivalent to 17mm with the Nikon sensor, but that's still wonderfully wide. There's nothing comparable for any of the other D-SLRs out there except for a few professional cameras (the Canon 1Ds, the Kodak equivalent, etc.). In general, Nikon's line of DX lenses gives some amazing wide-angle options that make up for the smallness of the sensor. I don't believe that any of Nikon's competitors have anything like this on the wide-angle end of the scale.

- My only other Nikon lens right now is the 105mm macro. It's fantastic for shooting tiny things, but not very useful as a portrait or sports lens. I tried shooting some guys playing basketball outside, and it just can't accurately autofocus on a person standing
10-15 feet away. It kept getting distracted by the background. Even with closeups, you end up doing a lot of manual focusing.

- I'm pondering purchasing some kind of telephoto lens. I'm torn between the 80-200 (weighs less, costs less, but still pretty hefty), or the 70-200 (weighs and costs noticably more, but has nifty vibration reduction technology). I'm more likely to get the 10.5 fisheye before I'll get any kind of telephoto.

I've only put a small fraction of my D70 photos online. You can check out two parties that I've been two recently with my camera here and here.

Follow up: I ordered one of the Phoenix units, we'll see how it does...

More recent observations with my camera:

I realized part of the source for my unhappiness with the focus system. I went and read the manual again, closely, and I now understand what I was doing wrong. As a reminder, the camera has five "focus zones", one center, one left, one right, one top, and one bottom.

There are two main autofocusing modes (with two variants of the latter mode). The "simple" mode, which you get when you select any of the "VariProgram" (read: idiot) modes, is that the camera will focus on whatever it sees to be closest in any of the five sensors. If you're a point-and-shoot shooter, or if you're shooting over your head and can't actually put the focusing zones on anything in particular, then this mode is the right one to use.

If you have the camera in "P" (program) or one of the other modes that give you more control (which you need to do if you want, for example, to use the SB-800 flash in commander mode), you have a choice of using a specific one of the five sensors ("single sensor") or a dynamic variant where the camera may somehow intuit that the subject that you initially picked up in the center sensor moved to the left, so the camera will continue tracking your subject on the left sensor. The dynamic mode is only likely to be useful for certain sorts of sport shooting. (Of course, you can also tell the camera that you still want the "closest subject" focusing mode.)

Anyway, when you're in the single sensor mode, you can manually choose which sensor is used. And, by default, this is selected using the arrow buttons on the back of the camera. I'd been bumping these buttons all the time and my chosen sensor had been moving around willy nilly. Unsurprisingly, I came out with some improperly focused pictures. Reading the manual closely, I now understand why there's a "lock" switch on the back of the camera. If you move it to "L", then your chosen sensor stays put, even if you accidentally press the arrow buttons. Proper use of the camera (which the manual was not terribly clear on) is to leave this set to "L" until such a time as you want to move your focus sensor selection. Only then would you switch off the lock, move the sensor, then turn the lock back on.

Score one bonus point for the Nikon ergonomics people for realizing they needed the lock switch. Score one penalty point for the people who wrote the instruction manual for not making this abundantly clear beforehand.

My next adventure: a close reading of the manual for my SB-800 flash.

Additional follow up...

The phoenix unit works quite nicely. Does exactly what I wanted it to do. Turns the room into daylight essentially. I can point the thing straight up and the light from it is, if not natural, at least not nearly as unnatural as a direct facing flash.

The build quality is very cheap, and its system of brackets and screw attachments is downright chintzy and fiddly, but it does *work* and takes care of exactly what I needed it to.