About

Planet5D is all about the Canon 5D (and all of the different versions like the Mark II). We also have the 5D wiki where much of the information from the blog gets stored for easy access.

Why planet5D?

In the spring of 2008, i bought a Canon 5d. I wanted to move up from the Xti to a full frame camera. I had done a lot of reading and I learned about the full frame advantage and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the 5d. The more I used the 5d, the more I loved it. You often don’t see that much of a difference with a new camera, but as Benjamin Ellis has found, the full frame can make a huge difference. I even started a rudimentary blog about how excited I was. I also tried becoming an Amazon affiliate to see if I could gain a little income to support the idea of putting effort into a blog… after all, if you don’t have some motivation, either readers who come read or some other reason to post, then most likely, you’ll fail or quit writing. I had one sale thru amazon and that was interesting, but it obviously didn’t keep me going.

Then, along came the announcement about the Canon EOS 5D Mark II and the world got excited. Shortly after that, Vincent Laforet created the famous video “Reverie” and excitement went thru the roof. At that point, I started reading all of the photography forums and the same questions were asked and answered over and over. That’s when I decided that a wiki was the right thing to create. It is hard however, to convince people to help edit a wiki (maybe I just don’t know the right trick?). It is also hard to get people to find the wiki and to realize it has a ton of information in it.

I was thinking that this would be the right place and time to launch a wiki about the canon 5d. Of course, I wanted to be able to continue later on, so I didn’t want to put the mark ii in the name in case the blog continues into the next release and beyond. I’d also given myself the nickname ‘planetMitch’ in the previous 6 months or so. I’d been looking for something short and unique. In the past, I’d always used ‘maunger’ (which is a combination of my first name and last name which was so hard to explain to people). I saw someone had named themselves planetPaul (or something similar) and I thought that was unique and would be easy for people to remember, so I became planetMitch. It was also something that wasn’t very likely taken as a screen name. So I guess I’ve begun my branding as “planet” everything – and thus planet5D was born. Simple name, easy to remember and yet still described what I hope the essence of the site will be. Everything about the 5d – the best information on the planet.

The pieces of the planet5D:

Note: In September 2009, Canon announced the Canon EOS 7D and we’ve decided that instead of creating a separate blog/wiki, we’ll incorporate all that information into planet5D. Maybe someday we’ll change the name, but for now, just remember planet5D for all of your Canon hybrid still/video information!

Wiki – the repository of information with a search capability.

Blog – where you are now – the ‘news’ section of the latest and greatest Canon hybrid camera news.

Forum – interactions with other great people

Home – hosted on smugmug – the introduction pages and other miscellaneous information.