I attended the Canon workshop today in Montreal. I had chance to talk to a Canon representative after his 10D presentation.

During and after the presentation, he mentioned the following:

1. since yesterday EF 200/1.8 lens is discontinued, because it is an expensive lens, as expensive as 400 and 500.

2. we can expect to come 600 and 500 DO lenses soon

3. on my question if there is any replacement for 50/2.5 macro coming soon he answered that all non-USM lenses will be sooner or later replaced by USM versions - what the news

4. he talked about 17-40/4 and that it has a special coating on lenses facing the sensor to reduce reflection of the light reflected from the sensor and that it shouldn't have so strange reflection as 16-35 on digital cameras(can someone show us comparison shots?)

5. he also said that they now have three lines of EF lenses -
a) consumer, b) advanced amateur/semi-pro and c) pro and that 17-40/4 belongs, together with 70-200/4, to the semi-pro line

6. I asked about 10D front focusing problems - he said that they know about that and that 1 of 30 bodies has this problem and that it can be easily fixed. He tried to explain it: a good camera should focus on the point at 1/3 - 2/3 point of the depth of field range and that somehow on some cameras it is vice versa (2/3-1/3), (this could make sense). But then he also said that some cameras don't have well placed sensor and that it should be fastened and the camera recalibrated .... ??????

7. I asked also about bad pixels mapping - he said that service people can use a pixel form non-active part of the sensor and physically replace the bad one within the active area ??? He said that it is much cheaper than replace the whole sensor. He also said that if it's 4 neigbours pixels f.i., it is possible to remove them and shift all rows of pixels to replace them ???

Anyway, I just wanted to share some news with you (I am not saying that all of that is true, it's just what I heard !)

Best,

Fero
Wildlife and Nature Photography
www.wnp.sk