Digital SLR's

I must make a confession - much of this blog is prompted or wholesale driven by the pithy content on John Gruber's renowned Daring Fireball blog - so if you find this too windy, boring etc just read that instead as it is the business.

Anyway, on the back of this John linked to this article on Digital SLR's. I get asked about digital cameras a lot and I always shy away from recommending digital SLR's on the basis that most people who need to ask what camera to buy will not want the extra weight, flexibility/complexity etc of the SLR format. However, this is not always the case and this article is a great way of pointing the interested party to a place to make their own decision. In short they are wonderful and I really wouldn't want to go back to any other camera but then I suppose I am a fully paid-up fan and have been for a while.

Given that we are on this subject there is always the question of Canon vs Nikon which is well covered here. I seem to see a lot of Canons on the touchlines of sporting events (more than Nikons, anyway) and also in the hands of the paps but then a lot of the pro & pro-am photo blogs seem to be populated by Nikon users so maybe there is something in the artistry of the Nikon and the 'get the job done' nature of the Canon.

Not that it will affect my very basic photography as I have much learning still to do. Current rig, for illustration, is a Canon EOS 5D (packing the full 35mm sensor) with Canon 50mm f1.4 prime - all they say about this lens is true - and a very nifty Canon EF 14mm f/2.8 L USM lens, and a Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM which rocks the telephoto jobs. Not too heavy, quite flexible.

Recent purchases include the SanDisk Extreme Firewire Reader which can transfer images at FW800 speeds - quite useful when the 5D's full sensor RAW images are 12MB or so.