Through the years I’ve had a handful of cameras.  When the kids were born we moved into the digital world with a little 3 MP Kodak point and shoot camera.  It took great pictures and I took thousands of them. When the kids were toddlers, I realized how many photos I was missing because of the slow response of the camera.  It was then that I moved to a Digital SLR.  I started with a Canon Digital Rebel, moved to a Canon 30D and now shoot with a Canon 5D.  Here’s more on my current rig.

Aperture 2

I shoot RAW and process my photos in Aperture 2.  In the early days I use to do most of my correction with Photoshop, but since moving to Aperture, I can’t tell you the last time I’ve used Photoshop.  Aperture is simple, fast, convenient and easy to use.  I use it for all of my processing.  The edits are non-destructive and I use the vault feature for my back-ups.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II

Why do I love the Canon 5D?
• It has a 21.1-megapixel full-frame CMOS sensor,
• A beautiful 3 in. LCD TFT monitor,
• It’s fast, shooting up to 3.9 fps,
• It supports an ISO Range of 100-6400 (expandable to ISO 25600),
• It offers Live View shooting,
• It can shoot HD video.

Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens

This is my primary lens and is image stabilized, which gives me another stop or two in low light environments.  I probably shoot 98% of everything with this lens.  It’s very versatile.

Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens

When I need to “reach out and touch” a subject, I use this telephoto lens.  It is more than twice the length of my “everyday” lens.

EF 50mm f/2.5 Compact Macro Lens

I use this prime lens for macro and portrait work.

Speedlite 580EX II Flash

This is my flash or choice as it offers a lot of flexibility

SanDisk 16GB Extreme IV UDMA CompactFlash Card

This card allows me to shoot 1080 HD video from the camera

Lexar Professional UDMA Firewire 800 CF Reader

This reader supports data transfer rates of up to 800Mb/sec via Firewire 800, which comes in handy when your files are 21 MB each.

Now, if I could only get the optics of the 5D into my iPhone my dream for a digital SLR iPhone could be fulfilled!

1. Your Mileage May Vary

At the time our Prius was advertised to get 60 MPG around town.  Despite our best efforts, we never got more than 42 MPG, at least according to the on-board computer.  But when I ran the actual numbers myself, we only got about 35 MPG, which is a MAJOR reality gap.

2. One Size Fits One

We’re a family of 4 and while it was actually a very roomy vehicle, it was just too small when we needed to go somewhere together.

3. Battery Burn

Like all batteries, they eventually just give out and need to be replaced.  The Prius has a rather large battery so we were concerned about the life of the battery and the cost to replace the battery.  Would it last 3 years, 5 years of 10 years and would it cost $2,000 or $10,000 to replace?

In the end, we sold Patty on July 2006 to a college student who needed reliable transportation.  We replaced Patty with Ava Avalon.  Ava is larger, faster, (I have tickets to prove it) and gets about 32 MPG on the road.

Toyota if you’re listening, we’d love to buy the next generation plug-in Prius that would address all of our concerns, but so would most of the auto-driving public.

It seems to me that if we could put a man on the moon in the 60′s with a pretty cool electric car might I add, we should be able to build a better Patty Prius today.

Patiently waiting .

The Smith Family

Wesley and Kaite's last picture with Patty Prius