as richard pointed out in the comments to my last post, i have indeed joined the 10mpx club, as it were, but i didn't end up getting a new e-510 because of the extra two megapixels, the image stabilization or the live view. they're all nice, great to have, but i don't now have them especially that i needed them, i have them because i needed a second body alongside my e-500 for working as a photographer. as a hobbyist, which i still very much am most of the time, i'm still thrilled with my 500 and would have much rather spent the 510 money towards lenses, a real tripod, filters, studio lights, software and all manner of other things photographic. actually, it makes me a little sad that it's now the 500 that's the second body, it's a wonderful, wonderful camera. i'm not sure i've said wonderful enough, as in, full of wonder. and also now at over 50,000 shutter releases, its focal plane might be reaching its design life.

as for the improvements, the extra pixels are great and they do show a difference, but it's hardly the same level of change as was going from 5.1 to 8 as i did when i moved up from the c-5060 to the 500. the sensor-based image stabilization is quite nice to have, and every single e-system lens i own and all the ones in the future are now effectively image-stabilized, and i must say the 510's i.s. really works, it's kinda freaky, actually. live view, oly's innovation from about 2 years ago with the e-330, and in just the last few days announced in the upcoming canon 1ds mk3, the canon 40d, the nikon d3 and the nikon d300, is awfully neat too, and while hardly an always-on feature on any slr, one of the biggest things i've started to love about live view is the live histogram available in that mode. live histogram on a dslr! soon everyone will have it, but i've got it right now.

using the 510 is pretty much just like using the 500. and that's an awesome thing to my mind. differences in use, aside from the features above, are a slightly faster frame rate; much faster and intuitive autofocus (and the 500 wasn't slow, but, especially with my 50mm portrait macro with its huge range of focus, it got a bit "hunty" at times); a slightly different configuration of some of the buttons eliminating my biggest beef with the 500 - its reference white balance button and how easy it was to trigger accidentally; a lighter body (and the 500 is pretty damn light to begin with); and better balance and handling overall.

and again, aside from the extra couple of megas, the 510 has eliminated the only major problem i've experienced with the four-thirds system: high iso noise. this camera shoots beautifully at iso 1600, showing only a bit of very film-like grain at that speed, and unlike almost any camera i've ever used, the colour balance is *identical* from iso 100 all the way up to 1600. i honestly wasn't expecting such low noise from this mount until the next generation of four-thirds cameras, and many naysayers had said it could never happen at all.

i go on and on, it's as if i'm insecure or something. but i'm not, but then there's those nights and days that you worry as a third-system shooter. canon owns the dslr market. nikon has the lion's share of what's left of it at number two. olympus, depending on region, is number three, and really they have only a fraction of nikon's share. oly's bodies are a steal, everything else they make - lenses, flashes, etc. - costs just as much as the big two, occasionally more, and at this point i've got over $4000 invested in four-thirds (this doesn't count any system-portable accessories), not lots and lots, and there's lots more investment to come, but an awful lot for me. what i like about the e-system, as i'd like about canon's or nikon's systems if i used them, is that they're good enough that at the end of the day, it's about the skill and the imagination of the photographer and not about technical limitations. and i consider the 4:3 aspect ratio of the e-system a huge, huge creative plus.

canon announces 21 megapixels, nikon announces a full-frame body, it's just so exciting to be making photographs today and don't think for a moment i don't pause to dream when i read about such things. i also stop to wonder, in the case of canon's medium format challenge, whether or not canon even makes an ef lens yet capable of that kind of resolution, hopefully, by the time we can all afford the eight-processor imacs it's going to take to edit and render 20+ mpx images at a workflow rate, they will.

anyway, i bought a new camera yesterday, more because i needed it than wanted it. and damn, regardless of need over want, it's pretty fucking suite.

no picture tonight. i've done about 200 so far with the 510, none even trying to be creative but rather to learn the new body, i'm just too busy and tired this week to give that part of it a proper go. i'll be shooting the 510 in production on saturday, the proceeds of which made the second body possible, and from what i know of it so far it's gonna make me sparkle.