I did say might, not definitely would. I’ve got plenty of exercise, but I’m also feeling a little burned on some of the DIY stuff, since the new cord that I ordered to fix my long sync cord didn’t solve the problem. By the time you add up the money I’ve spent trying to avoid buying something expensive, I’ve wasted a lot of time and been nickel and dimed. But that’s the topic for another post.

Commercial photographers, paid by the job, in a competitive environment, may certainly be looking for the next “edge” but they’ll write off the equipment anyway. (And I expect many aren’t happy with the rapid depreciation of digital bodies!)

I’d be happy to loan you one of my 30 yo film cameras that still work great, or my plastic Holga for that matter, if you’re looking for an exercise. Black & white is still cool, IMHO.

Oh, and having been out in the Chilly Hilly in the pouring rain, I can say that the weather seals on the D200 hold up just fine!

Just an idea I had and wanted to see how far it would go. Seems to have caught on a bit.

D200 items on my personal list: build, bigger viewfinder /w larger coverage, better AF, built in wireless flash controller. Megapixels is not an issue.

As far as the Canon white paper, all I am saying is that the paper will tend to portray the camera in the best possible light, and for things like actual assessments of the 14bit adc stuff and the actual image quality at iso 3200 and 6400, I prefer to have a 3rd party verification of that.

Okay, it’s 10 megapixels instead of 8, but I would hope that the people buying cameras at this level of sophistication are smart enough to understand that the difference is trivial.

I guess that some people are attracted by the partial weather-sealing of the D200. But it seems to me that partial sealing is not much more useful than no sealing.

I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with the D200, mind, but I also don’t see anything there that “demands” that Canon respond. The D200 seems to deliver the same feature set as the 30D at a price about $200(US) higher. Maybe I’m missing something here?

I’ll also take a quick poke at your characterization of the White Paper as being a marketing piece. Canon’s DSLR white papers are the primary sources for technical information about the various systems involved. If you want to know how a particular camera system works, and why it works that way, the White Paper is the place to turn.