I talk about 500 megapixel sensors, diffraction, and the new Kodak 50 megapixel sensor.

The Canon 5D Mk II is here. And I was right that Canon was waiting for everybody else to put their cards on the table before letting loose with the 5D. 21 megapixels (slightly less than the A900, but more than the Nikons), maximum ISO of 25,600, live view, and 1080p HDTV recording.

I agree with this assessment. An A-series Canon without manual modes is a piece of crap.

I'm a little scared about the A-series from Canon.

The A-series has represented a great Honda Civic (Or Toyota Corolla, which is the most recent car we've purchased) sort of experience. It's not excellent at anything in particular. It's not the smallest. It's not the most impressive. It's not the best in the darkness. But, at the very least, it gets you most of the way there. It takes decent pictures, has a decent user interface, and doesn't suck in any major way. And because it's utilitarian and not sexy, you don't pay tons of money for it.

Some notes on film, some cool and not-so-cool stuff out of PMA, and a few more tidbits.

The Sony Alpha A900 is out, with a full-frame 24.6 megapixel sensor with built in IS. I'm the sort of person who thinks that this, paired with a 50mm 1.8 lens, would be fairly neat. You can bet that Canon was probably waiting for this to occur before they announced their 5D replacement, tho.

A Kodak letter got scanned and passed around the Internet and it looks like another emulsion is gone -- Ektachrome 400X this time. They make some pains to explain that families of film other than 400X are not actually dead in the letter.

It's $2250, but I still kinda want the Voightlander Bessa III 6x7 folding rangefinder. Not bad enough to pass around a hat.... yet. :D

Every time somebody bumps up the number of megapixels, there's always another set of blog posts about how useless the megapixel race is. But I don't think they get it right all the time...

Despite my film-shooting bent, I do like to keep up with the digital scene as well. This is all rampant speculation based on the available facts, given that nobody's dropping any expensive loaner hardware on my doorstop anytime soon.

The official rumors on the G10! My bet is that the sensor is still tiny and the biggest improvement is going to be the dedicated exposure compensation dial. I could be wrong, however.

And here I thought I was a little oddball for wandering around with my G7 and my RB67... but apparently everybody else does that too.

13.5 megapixels (meh), built in GPS (really cool), 28mm equivalent on the wide side (good), and built in Ethernet, which I've never seen before. Also, the new RAW format only works with Windows, which is probably one of the dumbest things I've ever heard.

Remember what I said yesterday about waterproof being the new thin? Canon has an inherently waterproof digital camera now too.

News from around the web about the Nikon D700 full-frame digital SLR and the SB-900 flash.