“Encourage [your kids] to play somewhere well-lit,” they say. Riiight… and the rest of the time, a big aperture (with corresponding shallow depth of field) is your friend. This has meant, unfortunately, that on the relatively few occasions I’ve tried it, I’ve gotten pretty miserable results shooting video with a DSLR: kids run in & out of focus with abandon, and without any sort of autofocus, I’m lost.
Now, however, the Canon 70D promises great things in that regard:
At present I’m shooting with an original 5D (passed on to me by Bryan O’Neil Hughes when he upgraded to the 5D Mark II, and still one of the nicest gifts I’ve ever gotten), but I’m starting to feel sorely tempted to upgrade, even sight-unseen. Any reason I shouldn’t? Yeah yeah, there’s the whole not-full-frame thing, but I think people get a little irrationally fetishistic about that one, and I doubt I’ll die as my 24-70mm f/2.8 lens ends up effectively zooming in a bit. (By the way, it’s the investment in that thing that’s keeping me in the Canon camp, but I’m open to hearing ideas from Nikon & other shooters.)
In any case, I’m excited that the technology is evolving to this point, and at a fairly attainable price point to boot. Viva competition.