It seems the CompactFlash card association have been making giants leaps with their new memory card standards. They have just announced the CF 5.0 specification and, well, we just need to hope hard disks keep up as the figures they are talking about are CRAZY.

Ok, so there are no cameras that currently support CF5.0 but when it happens, well, here's some figures to keep you amused.

Currently, CF cards use 28bit addressing, a data transfer unit size of 128KB/se and a maximum capacity of 137GB. CF5.0 gives the following:
48-bit addressing
32MB/sec transfer unit size
144 petabytes of theoretical maximum capacity. Yeah, you read that right. And for those that don't know what a petabyte is, each petabyte is 1,000,000 Gigabytes. so that's 144 million gigabytes in a single compact flash card.

So, you'd best start looking at your hard drive storage now - or maybe just a couple of CF cards will do?! 

If you're of that persuasion and fancy an interesting technical read, here's the latest whitepaper on CF5.0 as a pdf. 

Not so long ago the ugly head of controversy raised above the parapet and threatened the world's largest wildlife photography competition.

It seems the rumours and accusations are true. The competition has taken the most drastic step of disqualifying the 2009 winner, Jose Luis Rodriguez stating it is in breach of rule 10.

For those unaware of the story, a month or so ago, claims surfaced to suggest his image of a wolf jumping a fence was not actually a wild wolf like he claimed, but an animal model that can be hired for film and photo shoots. Clearly this goes against the concept of 'wild' life and breaches the rule stating animal models are not permitted entry to the competition. 

It's been a drawn out process involving investigation and a re-convening of the judging panel. Mr Rodriguez still strenuously denies the charges and asserts the wolf is indeed wild. 

It appears there will be no successor to the winner's crown for 2009 which does somewhat leave a hole in the proceedings. 

A statement from the NHM and BBC Worldwide can be read here. 

As regular blog readers will know, I have been using the PocketWizard Flex and Mini units for a while now. However, there is something on the horizon that promises to make them even easier to use - the ZoneController.

Essentially, the ZoneController fits on top of a Mini TT1 and gives you easy access to control three zones of light (groups in Canon speak). Instead of having to put a Speedlite on the Mini to provide manual power settings and ratio control, the ZoneController simply has three dials - one for each Zone. Spin the dial to choose a power level and away you go. Simple, quick and easy to use, and it frees up a master unit to go out into the groups! 

I'm hoping to get my hands on one when they arrive (early 2010 I'm hoping). As soon as I have one, I'll bring you an update, including a price for them. For more info, take a look at the PocketWizard site here.