A few weeks ago my wife and I traded “up” to a Canon EOS 40D digital SLR camera.  We also invested pretty heavily (for non-professional, borderline rookies) in lenses that we knew we’d use most often.  When the Canon Digital Rebel (EOS300D) first came out, I bought it…what can I say, I’m a geek!  I paid over USD $1K for the kit and it was/is a good camera.  Still, it was the first and probably not even considered ‘prosumer’ grade. 

Advance about 3 years (maybe 4?), for the same price (actually a little less), I’m in a 40D with amazing lenses, functionality and quality.  The quality/price ratio has been getting exponentially higher as this digital photography progresses.  And then I hear about the Canon 5D Mark II camera with video capture.  I’m not going to run out and buy this one (at USD $2700 for the body only it is a bit much, but maybe in a year :-)), but this story is amazing!  Vincent Laforet is a 33 year old photographer in New York.  His work is impressive.  Recently he convinced Canon for a little try-before-buy deal.  He asked to borrow the 5D Mark II for 72 hours.  He would use his own lenses and shoot some photos and video.  The resulting images/video would be royalty free to use (I think that was the deal).  Using nothing but his existing lenses and the new camera he produced an amazing video (with no re-touching) which he calls Reverie.

You must absolutely spend the time to let this video download and watch it.  The quality is amazing…and that’s with some compression so it didn’t chew up amazing bandwidth on the web.  Wow.  Simply wow.  More details on the story and a behind-the-scenes video at Vincent’s blog.