Canon 5d Update and Other Stuff

Back on September 24th, I wrote the second in a two-part posting on my new Canon 5d. I've had the camera for over a month now and wanted to close the loop with my final subjective opinion: you'll have to chop off my arm to part me from my 5d.

There is something intangible about the photos that come out of that camera. I'm not sure it is entirely caused by the physics of a larger sensor with bigger, fatter receptors, but the images just seem more vivid and take less tweaking with Lightroom. The histograms seem to be better distributed if that's possible.

I thought that I'd use my 70-300 zoom on the 20d and the 24-105 zoom on the 5d, but I find that I'm using the 5d almost exclusively and changing lenses. I guess the 20d has been relegated to my back-up body.

In another development, one of my favourite Photoshop plug-ins just got better. I got a note from Fred Miranda saying that his Velvia Vision plug-in has been improved and now works well with Windows Vista and Photoshop CS3. The price is right - only $24.90 for new purchasers and half price for people who have the older version. I really got a kick out of ordering the upgrade. For the first time EVER, I bought an American product with my Canadian credit card and ended up paying LESS than the U.S. price. The Canadian dollar rocks!

VV is a plug-in that extends dynamic range and does local contrast enhancement. It can also tweak colour casts.

Here's the link to the VV site.

Credit River Valley - beginning of fall, taken from a very scary, high bridge
taken with a Canon 5d and Canon 24-105 L lens