I spent the majority of last week doing what any good tech writer does — reviewing fancy, expensive equipment and wishing I could keep it all. For the record, I would be perfectly happy if my wages were paid by exorbitant electronics. I would raise my kids on the sweet taste of silicone and poor UI design.

Both the Canon 7D and the Nikon D3000 are fairly recent entries to the DSLR market. One is an incredibly high-end device, and the other, more of a consumer product. What’s nice about both is that they’re radically different from my current Canon 30D.

Full reviews for both will be up in about a week or two on The Globe and Mail, but there’s a few things that struck me about both, now that I’ve had time to distance myself from the two devices. I’ve never really gotten much time in with a Nikon camera, but I have to admit, the menu system is pretty damn nice. It throws you all the information you need on-screen, in a nicely organized manner that’s suited to both power users and amateurs alike.

My big love with the Canon 7D was just how damn sharp everything was. I’m talking thumbtack sharp. James Bond sharp. Steak knife with garlic powder and a nice BBQ marinade sharp. I was sent a kit lens, a non-L series medium-zoom, but I couldn’t bring myself to use it much. Not when I had my 50mm f/1.4 to play with. Almost all of the pictures I took were with that lens, and it made for some beautiful shots with the 7D’s new movie mode.

Strangely, the 7D outputs video, not in AVI format, but in Quicktime h.264. It’s a little bit of a strange choice, and I’d imagine the on-the-fly encoding is what causes the camera to heat up so quickly. There is actually a warning that constant filming can degrade video quality, and even heat up the camera to a degree where it must be cooled down before further use. Same applies to the Live View preview functionality.

I have a few test shots up on the first and second page of Flickr, which you can view here if you’re interested. More information in the coming weeks!