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Apologies for not posting about the Canon 5D Mark II before now, but I’ve been slightly busy (what with a wedding to plan, attend, and a honeymoon to take…) But wow, what a camera.

Just in case you’ve been living under a DSLR rock, the 5DMkII will be a 21 megapixel camera that promises to have low-light capabilities to rival the Nikon D3 (the “expanded” ISO range goes up to 25,600 ISO.) And, just to make everyone drool, it’ll do full 1080p HD video recording via the live view mode. Crazy. From what I can tell it only does 30fps, not true 24p, which instantly knocks its usefulness down a few pegs, but it’s still pretty amazing-sounding.

It also has Canon’s new DIGIC IV processor, better battery life, and a 3-inch 920,000-pixel LCD display. The list price is supposed to be $2,699, which is pretty ridiculously cheap for a sweet full-frame DSLR and HD video recorder all in one. And when you combine the D3-level low light capabilities with the HD movie recording capabilities, you have a camera that does stunning low-light video recording, supposedly blowing away most of the HD camera competition.

Check out this post by Vincent Laforet for a low-light microbudget film shot in the weekend with 12 hours of pre-production on the 5D Mark II. Insanely good-looking (no post-processing was done to the clips at all, they just dumped them straight into Final Cut Pro and edited.)

I would accept one of these for Christmas. Thanks in advance.

Nikon has announced the Nikon D700. And there was much rejoicing in Nikonland. The D700 will be very similar to the Nikon D3, keeping the D3′s full frame (“DX” in Nikon terminology) 12.1 megapixel CMOS sensor. The body size is closer to the Nikon D300, though, making this a nice compact (in DSLR terms, of course) full-frame camera, smaller and lighter than the D3. It has a cheaper shutter than the D3, rated to 150,000 cycles instead of 300,000, only has one card slot, and doesn’t have the rear LCD info screen due to the smaller body size.

The usual bunch of features, 3″ high resolution LCD, live view, UDMA flash card support, HDMI output, etc. The viewfinder sounds especially nice and large compared to most other DSLRs.

And, right on time, DPReview has a hands-on preview of the D700. There’s not a whole lot of commentary, but if you want to see every menu on the camera and a whole lot of glamour shots, it’s worth a look.

Canon Europe has announced a new entry-level DSLR that they’re calling the Canon EOS 1000D. In the United States it’ll be known as the Canon EOS XS. I assume it’ll probably have get a “Kiss Digital” name for the Asian version at some point.

The 1000D will have a 10.1 megapixel sensor, 7-point AF system, and 3 fps burst mode with no limit, at least in JPEG mode. There’s a sensor cleaning system, and a 2.5″ LCD with live view. It weighs 450 grams, making it Canon’s lightest DSLR to date.

It uses SD/SDHC cards only, no CompactFlash, which seems to be the trend these days — CF only in the more expensive DSLR cameras, SD in the cheaper DSLRs. I guess that’s to make the upgrade path easier from people using SD-capable point and shoots. For me, personally, my early point and shoot cameras all used CF, which was an intentional choice (well, at first, that was all that was around and reasonable, but eventually because I knew that the “good” cameras only were CF.)

No news on price or availability yet, but presumably pretty cheap, whenever it comes out.

Canon has released firmware updates for both the 1DMkIII and the 1DsMkIII.

For the Canon 1DMkIII, firmware version 1.2.3 is available, giving you:

• Improved stability of AF accuracy in AI servo AF when shooting extremely low-contrast subjects.
• Direct selection of AF points by the Multi-controller is added to C.Fn III-9.
• Alternate access to Exposure compensation is added to C.Fn IV-3.
• With the camera’s External Speedlite control menu, Flash function settings can be used to set the Wireless setting and Zoom.

For the 1Ds, firmware update 1.1.2 gives you the same things, minus the Speedlite settings.

Download, flash that firmware, and enjoy!