I thought long and hard about spending $5000 on an SLR package, but that's just too pricey for my usage level. Keeble and Shuchat in Palo Alto rents Canon SLRs for $50 a day (plus another $30 to $80 a day for lenses), depending on what equipment I'd need, and I just couldn't see needing a digital SLR camera 44 days over the next two years (you need to get your usage out of a digital camera in two years or less).

I took a little chance, though. I bought a grey market camera. Why? Because "official USA" cameras aren't for sale yet. Plus, they'll cost about $200 more.

But, that means I don't have a warranty and supposedly I won't be able to get my camera fixed in the US. I've found that isn't always true and that the camera manufacturers make more noise than it's worth about these things.

I'm taking a risk, albeit a small one. The failure rate on cameras is very low (when I managed a camera store almost all of our failures were experienced within the first few hours of usage and most failures after that point were due to abuse).

Anyway, the camera arrives this weekend or early next week. I'll let you know how it goes.