That's a bit like saying a Golf is a bigger, heavier version of the Polo. They're two very different beasts.

Yes, yes, and yes. Actually, it's not that big, but you certainly know you're holding one!

This past couple of weeks I've been out shooting all day at the Royal Horticultural Society garden at Wisley, Surrey. Depending on which lens I have on, my arms certainly let me know by the end of the day! I have quite long fingers, but I don't find the grip uncomfortable. All the main controls fall easily to my right index finger and thumb.

Chunky, professional, weatherproof, plenty of buttons and things to customise to get it just the way you want (you can map new functions to many of the buttons). I haven't fully explored them yet, but I've found at least two ways to store settings so you can set it up for fast action, indoors, whatever, without needing to fiddle through menus for ages. If I have one gripe, it's the depth of field preview button can't be mapped to another more convenient button.

If you were closer to Kent, I'd be happy to let you play with the thing for a bit.

Put it on a credit card.

As long as they give it back within a month you should be fine

It'd have to be someone else's card.

Buy one from the internet, play with it for a few days, then return under distance selling regulations.

Of course you have to be sure not to damage it.

I thought under DSR, you couldn't open the package?

How would you know if the shoes fit if you didn't try them on?

This county sucks balls. Can't afford to hire one, can't afford to buy it, but need to give myself the best chance for the winter. £60 in fuel will get me a 400m round trip approx. Is there anyone in a radius between about Bristol/Bath/Salisbury/Bournemouth or anywhere south west of there that has something I can play with?

I'll be staying with my parents in Poole around the middle of October. I can't help beyond that.

Why not pop up to Plymouth and speak to the shops there? Or there's a good independent in Exeter.

In all fairness, I could do with visiting Snow+Rock prior to shipping out to get a ski jacket and pants, amongst other things. I just wanna get going ASAP so I can start learning and practicing.

You wanna look at a 5D MKIII??

Thanks for the offer Heather. I wanna try and get something ASAP. Really appreciate it though.

Nobody got any experience of DigitalRev for shopping?

Wait - what? Have i missed something? You want a 7D but have no funds to buy nor hire one. What were you planning to do? Steal one?

No, I was planning to use my unending supply of credit.

The problem I have is a finite supply of funds and rapidly growing list of requirements with winter coming:

Rent
Food

then
4 x snow tyres
12 month European roaming car insurance
Ski jacket and pants
Goggles (and some kind of plan for the prescription situation)

then
Camera capable of shooting action and sports
lens to go with
CF Extreme(/Pro)
etc.

By rights, the camera is the least important, coz the other stuff needs doing even to just get there and ski. So then I was thinking I'll just get a cheap one or whatever, but the fact is, I can't take good action shots with anything less than a 7D or MAYBE (as I've said a million times) a D7000 / K-5.

Consequently, every penny counts and £60 when I should just be able to fiddle in the shop is a CF card, or a tank of fuel, or goggles etc.

I know in the past that I've advocated you should actually try the camera out in your hands for comfort and all those other reasons, but y'know, I never actually did that with my camera.
Mainly because it was a brand new model and none of the shops had any in stock, because any stock they got had all been ordered by people like me.

I spent a considerable amount of money on my camera just getting the thing without even having seen one in the flesh, so to speak, so it's not an absolute imperative that you have to do that, but I did buy brand new, not second-hand or reconditioned.

It's entirely up to you what you want to do though.

Mark

May I suggest you consider getting the camera with the kit lens? I know it's fashionable to knock the kit lenses, but I understand the manufacturers have upped their game a bit. The standard 17-50-ish kit lens will get you started, at least. When you can afford to, you can upgrade or add to the collection.

I use SanDisk CF cards exclusively. The largest one I have currently is a 16GB UDMA (60MB/s), which is big enough to let me shoot an hour of video if I want. It'll take over 600 RAW images, or about a thousand at full size JPEG.