[William Eisley]

I’ve had this camera in my hands for four days now (since 3/17) and it is IMPRESSIVE. It won’t be as fast as the 7D, but it handles low light fairly well. The dynamic range and color are awesome (well beyond the 7D). Very little noise up to 6 db gain. The zoom range is really nice and starts out wider than most (35mm equivalent of 30-300mm approx.) It has infrared mode with an IR light, waveform monitor, peaking and 2x digital zoom for focus assist (the digi-zoom doesn’t show up on the recording), intervelometer, 3 second pre-record, stop-motion frame recording with multiple settings from 1 to 12 frames, hot swappable CF card recording, XLRs with phantom power, overcranking, the lcd is fantastic. It has everything that most would want, but since it’s so small (3 lbs) it’s configuration is a little different and you have to dig thru menus for some features. Most of it’s buttons are also customizable, which helps out.

I saw a review that said this is not a run and gun camera, but I disagree. It’s pretty good in low light, but what makes the big difference is weight. It does a pretty good job in full auto as well. I think that a lot of people will be comparing this to the Sony ex1. I’ve shot a lot of footage with the ex1 and given the price difference, the canon is a much better bang for the buck. Given that the data rate is higher than the ex series without an external recording device, I’d probably pick the canon even if they were the same price.