Here's the first batch of photos from my new Canon 40D: Vista Verde World Fair, an evening of family fun at my kids' school with an international theme last Friday.

I also took 40 or so mother-daughter portraits Saturday for a girl scout event. For ease of printing at the scene by other volunteers I shot them as jpegs instead of my usual raw mode, and I was very happy by the results of printing straight from the camera.

So far I'm pleased with the new body: metering is more consistent, the color is better, and the greater resolution from six to ten megapixels is enough of an improvement to notice. The photos seem to need less postprocessing work, in general. The new 17-85mm lens is also pretty good, though I wouldn't want to use it for jpeg shooting: you pay for the wide range of focal lengths by some noticeable chromatic aberration, easy to eliminate at raw conversion time (Photoshop has parameters to scale the three color channels relative to each other) but more difficult once the pixels are fixed.