I’m a Cultural Icon, you know.

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Indian Elephant, originally uploaded by http://andrewskelton.net.

Five weeks old, that’s all he is, but already a big boy isn’t he?; mind you, when your birth weight is measured in stones, double figures at that, you will tend to be on the large size. I was struck, when looking closely through my “telescope” (as children tend to call it) at this young Indian Elephant how much body hair it had and with my eyes half open I could easily envisage it’s relationship to it’s ice-age forebears. If you recall a recent blog where I discussed the plight of the Sumatran Rhino, I mentioned that this creature was also covered in a layer of hair. Both of these animals hail from the same part of the world, which has sparked my interest to see if in some ways they are the closest remnants to the Ice Age – something to research I think.

Rumours are still bouncing around about the replacement for the Canon 5D mark II; and it’s interesting that in the way the 1Dx has less pixels than the 1Ds it was replacing (well, in part), the new version of the 5D is supposed to have dropped by 3Mpixels to 18Mpixels as well. I’ve mentioned before how high pixel count doesn’t necessarily lead to brilliant photographs (just ones that have more detail), for me I’d love Canon to have worked hard on expanding the dynamic range of the sensors to something more akin to film (or more) or beyond.

I’ve been reviewing the last 5 years worth of photos; I used to think I took rather good photos, but I’ve been rather amazed how much the 1D has boosted my photography. It’s not that I’m framing anything any different, but there is a difference to the images I am now getting to those previously – or is it that I’m biased and have mentally discounted previous camera images (more likely). Actually, I should really compare the photos I’ve been taking recently with the images I took just before I got my current camera, so that the images I’m reviewing were taken after using the cameras for the same time (and therefore should have got used to all the nuances of each camera). Having said that, on day one out with the 1D I was taking the type of images I had wanted to take with my old 5D, it just delivered exactly what I wanted. WHAT A CAMERA

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