First off a 500D. 12-15mp, 9pt AF, VGA screen, HD-Video and possibly with a revised body design.

Secondly, it’ll be the 1D4. All new AF, VGA, HD-Video, 15-20mp FF and with some control tweaks.

Lenses are a tough one. 24-70/2.8 IS would be a sensible gamble but if the 1D4 is being released, a revised 100-400 would be a sweet accompaniment.

I really cannot yet “prove” that there’s something wrong with my lens, just some more or less conclusive clues.
I did some extensive series of test shots with “real-world” macro targets (mainly flowers), which never seemed as crisp I would like them to have. As a consequence, I printed out an ISO chart and made test pictures with it, from a tripod, using mirror lockup, disabling IS etc., all to disable any chance for camera shake. After perfectly (as far as possible with what I have at hand) aligning the stuff, I made three shots at each of focal lengths indicated on the lens (24, 35, 50, 70 and 105), for different aperture values (4, 5.6, 8 ) and — and thats important — one series with “normal” AF, and anther with LiveView “Contrast AF”, which is slow but will usually be more precise. I reseted focus and refocused after every shot
Unfortunately, the results were not consistent. I had a few cases where standard AF would obviously misfocus, as the contrast AF pics were considerably sharper. But it doesn’t happen all the time. I could however convince myself that there is definitely a problem with chromatic aberration around the 105mm setting with my lens, CAs are about 5-6 pixels on my 450D. This is apparently atypical for this lens, which is reported by several testsites (slrgear, photozone.de) to show “above average” CA at the wide end, but not at the tele end.

I made the same shots with two of my other lenses, the el cheapo kit lens, and a Tamron 28-300 VC. In particular the Tamron looked considerably better with regard to CA.

I am exchanging the lens this week, my retailer will ship me another sample.