I wanted to share some pictures of what Camera's are being used over here by Army combat photographers.
Currently the Canon 5d series are in favor as the photographers are asked to take 50/50 stills and video and this camera serves double purpose.
The other camera's in use are the Nikon D3.
I asked about reliability and the soldier stated that they both get broken frequently with the lens mounts being the most common. He said they had a box of broken camera's and lenses from his last deployment prior to Afghanistan (Iraq).
These camera's both have taken a beating well beyond what a normal user would put a camera though and are working fine.
I was VERY impressed with the K7 build quality as it seemed closer to the D3 (a tank) than the 5d. He asked a bunch of questions about the Pentax as you can see it is much smaller than the others. He said the Canon is preferred for weight but has issues in low light with focus in which case they just switch to manual focus.
I have to say I was a bit jealous of this Army job, I was a UAV (unmanned aircraft) operator and loved my job, still do, but having the opportunity's this guy does for pictures would be fun (minus the combat). They carry both M4 rifle and M9 pistol as well as camera's and body armor. Total gear is @ 60 pounds typical without a pack.
Lee
(Shots taken at 6400/3200 and 1600 iso on the canon sx200is) I wanted to see how iso performed, worked pretty good in really low light.