Probably just another wild rumor, but there seems to be a faint shimmer of hopeful truth behind a "leak" that Canon will have a 5D mk2 "surprise" announcement on April 22nd.

~15 megapixels, ~5 frames per second, 14-bit, weather sealing, and an all-new ~25 point AF system, for $3500. Sounds reasonable! Oh and they're gonna have a high-res 3" LCD like the D3 and D300, too. That might have been what caused the delay in the release, since the Nikon LCD's are so beautiful and Canon would get slammed for not upping their LCD res in newer models. Even though it's just an LCD and has nothing to do with the sensor image quality or the photographer's talent...

Only 42 days till we know the truth, not counting other leaks...

=Matt=

One feature I often contemplate is the usefulness of the whole dual-card slots thing, a feature you only find in high-end cameras. Here's one thing to think about:

If you could put TWO CF cards in your camera, which is for now exclusively a D3 feature but not for long I'd assume, ...would you be less paranoid about using larger size cards?

Personally, I'm not comfortable shooting more than ~500 images per memory card. Right now that's a 4 gig card if I'm shooting JPG, or an 8-12 gig card if I'm shooting RAW. I'd be paranoid to have to start using 16 gig cards, for example, if I wanted to never have to change cards. But if I had dual card slots, I'd feel a lot more brave, and I'd probably plunk down for some 16 gig and maybe even 32 gig CF cards! It would be quite an advantage to have to never swap out memory cards, I think. The camera itself would see less wear in the card slot, which would be good, and the memory card would be less likely to get lost or damaged.

Just some food for thought, for those who like to fantasize about really expensive gear...

=Matt=