...so without cheating...

...we produced this image - slight color corrections, but other than that no changes to the original (especially no cropping), thanks to the Canon 100-400mm f4.5-5.6 L and the Canon 2x Converter on a newly bought 7D (which we bought just before we left to shoot such images - and left one of our 5D Mark IIs at home instead). Maan, that baby is hard to manually focus when fully extended. But this shot wasn´t fully extended, just about 2/3. If you extend it, it gives you a focal length of 1.280mm compared to a full frame sensor camera - that´s quite a lot. Unfortunately the 7D can´t quite compare with the 5D Mark II in regard to image quality. Even at ISO 200, there´s some noise, while the 5D image is just plain perfect. Additionally the 2x Converter doesn´t do the image any good too, but that´s one would expect when doubling the focal length with quite a "cheap" piece of Equipment.

Other than that, the 7D is a great camera with lots of new functions that really make sense - and work. Autofocus is great too, so are the 8 frames per seconds if you are used to just 3.5 (if I remember correctly)

Well, and at the same time this was our last sunset in the desert - the days we spent here were short and few, too few actually. Tomorrow we´ll leave to stay two nights in Dubai and then we´re heading towards home again.