Michael, many thanks for that well-balanced and sensible discussion of the "hot-button" issues that the 5D design evokes. The review is all the more useful because it discusses these generic issues so cogently. Also, those photographs of the Greek Islands are stunning, (and for the benefit of Ray) regardless of what camera they could have been made with; based on what you said about the purpose of the review, you were simply illustrating the article with some excellent photographs you made with the camera, not purporting to show any distinguishing characteristics of images the D5 can produce. As you made very clear, there is a whole suite of professional/prosumer cameras that all produce excellent photographs in the hands of good photographers.
There are several observations in your review that I would like to discuss briefly.
First is the question of weather-proofing. Fine, cameras are more weather-proof than their users - no quibble (grin). BUT, there are two parts to the package - the body and the lens. Canon L lenses are featured to have a degree of climatic and environmental protection that are not advertised for their other lenses. So for those not using L lenses on their bullet-proof camera bodies, one wonders whether or not this could be a bit of an "Achilles heal" - in terms of either damage to the lens itself, or the lens allowing whatever into the camera body.
Second is the observation about dust on the sensor. This is really confounding and counter-intuitive. You hardly changed the lens, no doubt in my mind you cleaned the sensor and surrounding area thoroughly and checked it before setting out, so what's going on? Raises a question in my mind about whether what you saw is really dust or something else, or whether there could be unreachable, dust-containing recesses in the camera body from which dust particles get released during use? Not to make a big deal of it, because such spots are usually few and far between and easily cloned-out in Photoshop.
Third, while the rules of the game for this review exclude evaluation of image quality, all rules are made to be broken, so let me proceed to do so forthwith: that image of the "Hangers" in NYC - to my mind - is a very good indicator of the kind of dynamic range one can achieve with this and likely many other high quality digital cameras. I don't know whether or not you did any luminosity blending on it, but that doesn't matter - the raw material needs to exist before even that technique becomes useful. As close an examination as one can do on a decent monitor shows very respectable tonal gradation and retention of detail in open shade and shadow areas.
