Canon's EOS D60, a proper single lens reflex (SLR) flip-up-mirror removable lens camera that happens to be digital. It's the successor to the already very good EOS D30, and it's a very capable picture-taking object, as you'd want it to be for the $US2200 or so that the basic kit will cost you.
That's without a lens, by the way; the D60 will work with any EF-mount lens (including Canon's ownselection, and lots of others), but a few decent lenses will pump the price up considerably more. Skimp on the lenses and you might as well not have bought the fancy camera in the first place.
And then there's CompactFlash memory cards for image storage, and other extra bits and bobs. All of which drive the price of a whole-box-and-dice D60 rig, here in Australia, up far enough that you're more than half way to paying for a basic new car.
made a serious effort to scam a loaner D60 from Canon Australia, but prolonged correspondence led me to the conclusion that they didn't actually have any cheese at all, at least as far as the D60 was concerned.
Fair enough, really; the D60 is a product that Canon are selling as fast as they can make it. In a situation like that there's no reason for a manufacturer to bother sending cameras to reviewers at all, until production meets the existing demand.
Lenses, Canon could lend me, but I decided to pass on that. They wanted to give me a selection of pricey glass including the monster EF 400mm f/2.8 L image stabilised USM, which is a 6.73 kilogram $AU17,000 behemoth (the second most expensive lens Canon make that isn't availableonly on special order...) which I'd have to buy a new tripod to even use. If I were into nature or sports photography, or if I were a career pervert, I might have found the thing very appealing. But I'm not, and my fear of dropping it outweighed my desire to play with it.
The upshot of all this is that I (gulp) actually paid for my whole D60 kit. Retail, yet. I feel so ashamed.
The Australian retail price for the D60 is currently $AU5499. For the nice round price of $5199.48, I bought a package deal from DirtCheapCameras here in Australia, which included the standard D60 kit, plus a second battery (the D60's charger has slots for two of its little lithium ion packs, but charges them one at a time), a BG-ED3 portrait grip, and a 192Mb SanDisk Ultra CompactFlash card.
The "Ultra" cards sound as if they should be fast, but they're actually slower than various cheap yum cha CF cards. But the difference isn't crippling, and the price was right. For the battery, grip and memory card I was only paying $AU349 extra; US discounters were charging about $US260 ($AU480 or so, as I write this) for the battery and grip alone. I presume DirtCheapCameras must have rather more BG-ED3s sitting around than they know what to do with.
Incidentally, DirtCheapCameras is the cut-price reduced-catalogue online presence of the Chatswood Impact Camera House store, here in Sydney. You can place an order on the DirtCheapCameras site and pick it up from the Chatswood store, adding stuff that you can't buy online. Well, you can if you're placing a hefty order, anyway; the Impact people are, understandably, less likely to go out of their way for smaller spenders.
I also got a Manfrotto 190PRO tripod (in the US, it's the Bogen 3001PRO) and neat-o grip-action 222 ball head (Bogen 3265). My old tripod was a super-light, ultra-cheap little integrated-head horror from Velbon; the Manfrotto gear is almost alarmingly superior.
If you've got a zoom lens - with or without spooky image stabiliser - and want to be able to use it for anything but very short exposures, you'll need at least one good tripod. I use mine more for close-up product shots, but the principle is the same; lots of magnification means lots of vibration sensitivity.
A rattly aluminium cheapo-tripod is good enough for most digitals, because they don't have enough resolution that the relatively small amount of movement that gets through to the camera matters. Once you've got 3000 by 2000 resolution, though, suddenly there's a reason to get something decent, beyond mere pose accessory collecting.
My Manfrotto tripod's cheap, compared with the real vibration-deadening kings; many photographers drop several hundred bucks on a wooden tripod, which is an excellent choice for muscular people, or those who don't take a lot of pictures on mountains. Carbon fibre tripods are feather-light and also have very good damping, but they're even more expensive than wood. For wind-shake resistance, super-light tripods can be temporarily weighted down with a bag (which you carry with you) full of dirt or pebbles (which you don't); that's the option many mobile photographers take.
My spending frenzy was not concluded. I got an RS-80N3 remote switch (a cable release, basically, but with a three-pin plug instead of a length of bicycle brake cable or a pneumatic tube), and a550EX flash. And a nice Lowepro bag, which isn't quite as attention-getting as those bags that say SONY or TOSHIBA or something in six inch luminous letters, but which still qualifies as a Steal-Me Bag.
The total price tag (so far) came to about $AU7500.
