You already know that I teach photography workshops, right? My buddy Chris and I have been teaching workshops for almost four years now, and although things were pretty slow in 2009, we are pushing ahead with a packed workshop schedule for 2010.

When you come on a workshop with Chris and I, you get to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with a total of 20 years of photography experience, heckle us with questions, meet people, and generally have a good time. Two instructors, awesome locations, and, here’s the sweet part… I’m giving you a discount.

I generally post articles when I have something very useful to say, which is why my posts have been so sporadic. There are a myriad of sources for photography industry news and I always feel I am doing my readers a disservice by parroting every new equipment release or software upgrade here.

This time, though, a piece of “news” hit my screen that I had to share, and I hope that by reading it here you will receive the whole story and not just 1/3 of it as some people did when they got the information from digg, reddit, or similar.

We’re talking about megapixels, and we’re talking about marketing, and we’re talking about lies. Lies perpetrated by the manufacturers of point-and-shoot cameras with tiny little CCD sensors who keep increasing the megapixel count and marketing it like it’s the end-all be-all of imaging performance.

Not so! Read on…

Well, here it is, folks. As reported by Digital Photography Review, Rob Galbraith DPI Engadget and undoubtedly more, Canon has officially released the EOS-1D Mark IV, the latest digital SLR in their 1-series (“pro�) line.

I find it somewhat amusing that they chose to throw on the EF 50mm f/1.4 for their promo shoot; a lens that, for me, spontaneously stopped auto-focusing after only a couple years of use and that exhibits pretty significant vignetting. Nevertheless, the EOS-1D Mark IV is a fairly intense camera body, with its 10 frame per second burst mode, and ISO settings up to 102,400. You should be able to lay your hands on one here in the States for a mere $4,999.

It really excites me that people are out there coming up with new techniques for photographing difficult subjects. It excites me even more that National Geographic has it in their budget.

Over on the right you see a photograph taken by Michael “Nick� Nichols (and his team) for National Geographic, which is on the cover (well, part of it is on the cover, it’s a huge photograph) of the October issue of the magazine.

Buchstabensuppe, by tillwe

For those of you Nikon shooters out there who ritualistically browse the B&H catalog and wonder What on Earth is a f/4.5-5.6G ED-IF AF-S VR DX lens, anyway?, now there is an answer for you, straight from our favorite bringer-of-technological-clarity, Bob Johnson at Earthbound Light.

In his post Nikon Lens Designation Alphabet Soup, Bob explains the meaning of all of those little acronyms that Nikon seems to throw around like confetti. At last, an understandable answer!