Thanks for pointing this out, Mike. I tried ordering, but it appears that Amazon won't ship this one to Europe. No wonder, it costs twice as much here ...

Hi Mike, when I read your comment on the "people 'in the know'", I took it to mean that mainly avid collectors and people in the "art world" appreciated the print enough to buy it. That went well with how I perceived the image. I find it interesting to hear that a number of people felt insulted by your comment. I did not perceive a slight. I guess that proves (yet again) that the written word is, especially on the internet, better weighed in triplicate before parceling it out ... Hopefully, there are no permanent hard feelings. Thanks, by the way, for explaining where the phrase about the mother and the boots comes from. Very interesting. I knew it was an insult, but I never appreciated its origins (or the finer point of what is really being said.)

Thank you for sharing this wonderful retort to rude comments! I almost fell out of my chair laughing. "I am not.", indeed!

The Canon 5D (mk I) does great (caucasian) skin tones in daylight or flash shooting RAW and converted using Capture One Pro. (Lightroom has been catching up, but in most images I find C1 is clearly better.) The colors break up somewhat over ISO 800. I'd agree with some of the comments above that the lens matters. I find the 70-200mm f2.8 L is awesome, with the 100 mm f2.8 L macro close behind. The 24-105 mm f4 L is nice taken by itself, but not even in the same league in direct comparison. When shooting JPEG, the Olympus E-P1 is great with "natural" settings in daylight and at low ISOs.

Couldn't agree more that from a "serious" photographers perspective, Nikon (and Canon) don't seem to be taking mirrorless serious ... yet. Then again, Nikon don't just take DSLRs seriously, they're also serious about compacts(*). I think there are pretty good chances that someone looking for a high-end CoolPix might choose a Nikon 1. After all, it is a step up. I recall reading somewhere that a huge proportion of DSLR-purchasers never purchase a lens, keeping the kit lens on the camera until they replace both. Most DSLRs sold are entry-level, so I would say this is at least plausible, if not probable. For these people, the available lens line-up is irrelevant, they are simply looking for a superzoom kit lens. So while I am 100% with you that the appeal of m4/3 to "serious" shooters is the availability of lenses (and bodies) from many manufacturers, the number of different lenses may not be the most important factor in the game of selling lots of cameras into the mass market. A lot of the angry reaction to the Nikon 1 seems to be because Nikon chose not to cater to the "serious" photographer crowd, but rather to "regular" consumers. Whether or not snubbing that particular crowd was smart is another matter entirely ... (*) Note that I said "serious about", not "successful with". :)

"... technological devices of any kind—should have what I need and no more." I couldn't agree more! That said ... you don't need live view, I find it very useful for accurate focusing. I don't need video, others do. You don't need a flash at all, -et- wants a pop-up flash, I need a standard hot-shoe, not a proprietary piece of junk designed to maximize lock-in ... and so it goes. I suggest that the answer is not to find the lowest common denominator, but rather to build a platform that is customizable to the needs of each individual user. Can't do it? Sure we can! My guess is that just about every iPhone on the planet is unique: you buy a basic package and then install whatever apps you need to turn it into your iPhone. Need to add a feature? Get a new app. Don't need the feature anymore? Delete the app. Simple. Why don't we do this with cameras? I don't know. Thom Hogan has been writing about this concept forever, so it can't be because the idea is secret ... (Incidentally, I've been suggesting something similar to engineers in the automobile industry since about 2002. Nobody home there, either. ;-)