5D II arrives! Meanwhile, Casio announces most important camera of 2009

Things are really starting to move in the camera world. My new 5D Mark II has arrived. A full report will follow but initial tests indicate that it's a similar step up in quality to my last upgrade (which was from a 20D to the 5D) and a bigger step up in terms of features.

In other news, Casio has announced the most important camera of the year, the snappily named EX-FC100 (which has an equally amazing sibling, the EX-FS10).

When I was a teenager and SLRs were the fastest cameras around, ten frames per second from the Canon EOS RT was about as fast as it got. These new babies from Casio do 30fps at 6 megapixels, HD video and a maximum framerate of 1000fps, all in tiny, pocketable digicams! Details at Phototography Blog. They also seem to feature what I have long thought should be the future of image stabilistation - the ability to take a lot of (presumably underexposed) stills very quickly and then "stitch" them together to create one sharp, properly exposed result. Oddly, however, they also appear to feature CCD-shake image stabilisation.