MEET SOPRANO

Picked up a new body from Hidalgo last week, a gray market 30d which I promptly christened Soprano. Gray market status allowed me to get it around 5k pesos cheaper, in lieu of course of the proper Canon Philippines warranty. Henry did give me one-year store warranty, though, which is good enough for me, seeing that I've never had any problems with my previous purchases from him. We'll see with this one.

So now good old Bauer, my 20d, is finally retired to back-up status, having already surpassed its 100,000 shutter clicks lifespan, and after having given me my 200th official (er, paid) shoot, also last week. About time, too, since on good months I now hit more than 20 shoots, and so I was starting to worry about my cam giving out. So Bauer will be attached to my 10-22 lens from now on, while Soprano will be my workhorse with the 24-105L. This also means I won't be needing to swap lenses as often, if at all—freeing up precious time during events shoots, and lessening the need to clean camera sensors (a necessary and delicate procedure that can result in camera death if done improperly).

There are a lot of little improvements of the 30d over the 20d, like a larger LCD screen, spot metering, one-third ISO stops—hell, even the file numbering and auto-rotate scheme (on-computer and not in-cam) are pretty sweet—whose usefulness I’ll no doubt get to maximize before the need for my next upgrade, probably due after a year or so. Damn the bug of endless upgrading, which, in the field of photography, would have left me dirt-poor by now, kidney sold and life ruined, had this not been my job.