Tales from the Tigerfort

The mildly awe inspiring specs for the new 5D mk 2 have been available for a while. Stupendous ISO figures, and the option of recording HD video using an SLR? I was impressed by the specs for the 50D, and the 5Dmk2 is (as you'd expect from the higher price) more impressive still. But specs are just numbers until you've actually seen some results, and shiny numbers don't always make a shiny toy; Canon haven't released all that much in the way of samples yet, especially of the video capabilities. (There are a modest selection in the DPReview gallery, however, and they're pretty impressive, even at ISO 25600, and very much so at ISO 3200. Official Canon video can be found here, but is all frustratingly low-res.) Unofficially, however...

...Vincent Laforet has just had a chance to play with one of the US review machines, and was essentially unable to contain his explosive awe. The link shows some stills and a few pages of commentary; the latest blog entry promises that the video will be available for download soon. [Edit: the video is now available. There's a link from his blog, which didn't work properly for me, and the 90MB file is to be found on Canon's website.]

If you're remotely interested in cameras, or video, or anything related, go and look at the pictures, and read what he has to say about them. If you think that compact cameras can take photos just as good as those from any SLR (you know who you are), look at Vincent's images, and then find me a compact that comes even close.

A DSLR that can record broadcast-quality HD video? It isn't yet going head to head with RED camera's products, but if the quality really is better, then that won't stay the case for long. I'm impressed. I want.

I now have backups of all my important data that are not inside the machine that contains all the original files. This is, on the whole, a good thing, although I still need to organise some kind of automatic and/or regular system for keeping them up to date.

Also, I have a shiny new camera toy, courtesy of my brother. This needs playing with :)