So where has the 40D been for the last few days? After its last PAD session on Monday it was sitting on 9,990 exposures. Although a turnover of numbers is really not significant in itself, I think that people (yes, even me) are drawn to "milestone" changes and I didn't want the 10,000th exposure to be expended on a pedestrian PAD. That's why the 300D has been called into service for the last few days.

(Unfortunately that backfired yesterday when it did an appalling job of capturing a subject that the 40D had previously done very well. Don't let 'em tell you there's no difference in the quality of the x0D and x00D ranges. Since I didn't have any backups that brought to a screeching halt the sequence of a photo every day for the preceding two weeks. C'est la vie.)

Anyway in the end I chickened out and just played the safe route for the 10,000th shot. Iconic landmark, dawn sky, blah, blah. Although to be honest I think I got there a little later than I should have and missed the period of greatest contrast between the blue of the night sky and the red of dawn.

(Yes, this is shot 10,000; the shutter count only goes to 4 digits and reverts to 0001 after 9999. I now have to use a batch rename in Bridge when I import 40D shots, and elected to simply go for putting the "1" in front of the camera's image name rather than dropping the value by 1 as well to reflect the correct exposure count.)

For the statistical record, the 40D's first shot was on 3 November 2007. The last shot that I took on New Year's Eve last year was shot 4,321 which works out to around 166 shots per month. This year, coinciding with the start of PADing, I've taken an average of 741 per month, and that's with the 40D out of service for a month for repairs. The next question is, what do I shoot for frame 100,000?