After searching for four hours last week, I decided upon the Lowepro Fastpack 250.

Naturally, this bag would have to meet security standards of the airline (DELTA) and that of FAA. After finding out that the bag would fit comfortably under the seat of the larger planes and a little less under the CRJ’s of Delta’s fleet, the bag meet my required needs.

I loaded it up last Friday. It’s heavy. But not uncomfortable to carry around through Atlanta.

I’ll post a “review” of the pack when I get back.

In April, it finally landed on U.S. shelves.

Key Features:
* Digic 4 Processor
* CMOS (first in a Canon PowerShot)
* Full HD (1080 at 30 fps) movie capability
* RAW
* 25 shooting modes with 12 special scenic modes
* 10 megapixel
* 20x optical zoom with optical image stabilized (it’s 560 mm in the 35 mm terms)
* Av (F-stop) is 2.8 at wide and 5.7 at full telephoto

Other Features:
* The camera has a self-timer, continuous shooting (4 fps) as well as remote control capability.
* Hotshoe for extranal flashes

You get HD video at 30 fps and get this, it has a mini-HDMI plug that’ll allow you to plug into your HD TV!

It’s got 4 fps of continuous shooting. 

It has RAW! Yes, you heard me. RAW!

And, for the first time ever, it has a CMOS sensor which gives you the crisp looking photos.

At 20x optical zoom, this makes it near the type of the line in the prosumer end of digital cameras. And at $600, you get virtually everything the 50D does (minus the 15 megapixels and lenses) and doesn’t require a lot of learning.

I’ll get it this summer, but before I go back to California in January.

I’ll get around to posting my advice on taking convention photos inside a convention hall. It was a lot of trial and error depending on the lighting, but I’m glad I did a custom white balance, it saved me a lot of post processing when I went to share some photos. You can see a sampling (about 500 photos) here.

I’m going Gold again next year (against my better judgment, ahem). However, I purchsed my ticket in the last row, which would be about four rows from the back of the theater. And it’s on aisle, so I could in theory stay in my seat. I’m gonna look around for a better monopod/tripod that won’t send me to the poor house.

One of things that I’ve learned is that crappy pictures are often the result of user error, not the camera’s inability to perform to expectations.

Granted, you pay for what you get. Naturally, a $9000 camera isn’t going to peform as well as a $600 camera. If you’re expecting the same quality, then you’re in for a real quick surprise. Or saying that the internal flash is slow to respond is pointless. You’ll get that with any camera. The best answer to a flash problem is to go to an external flash.

So, when you go out camera shopping, keep that in mind. Great photography is about 90% mental and 10% user.

Not great loss, I believe.