Just picked up a 5d II last week! Haven't worked with the video yet, but there is a new firmware out next week that will allow full manual control for the video capture. So, will be able to shoot with super shallow DOF, high ISO, and varied shutter speeds! Should be pretty rad.

The still images are amazing and it handles pretty well for a non 1 series.

I also think we might have different ideas about what is "good enough," but I totally agree that they are for completely different markets.

Do you mean “good enough” video or “good enough” stills. I won’t argue that ZS3 takes stills like the MKII. However, its video can definitely compete with almost all video and hybrid cameras.

Really what is your end goal for shooting video? Are you going to burn it to Blu-ray and sell those? If so then by all means the MKII would be your only option. However, I think most of us would just like to stream the HD videos over the web. If that is the case then 720p video is about the limit of current streaming technologies.

Have a look at this video. Not bad for streaming HD content that only costs me $9 a month!

http://tinyurl.com/lvh3rh

Your vid didn't play for me, but just looking at the single frame, I can tell we are talking about different things when we say "good enough"

I think we just need to agree that we have different ideas and goals, there is nothing wrong with what you shoot, if it works for you.

As for what I take when I go to shoot climbing? Usually two dslrs, three-four lenses, couple of flashes, 200 feet of static rope, plus all the usual gear.

Just curious but does any super high quality video of climbers(Like what you are talking about for weddings) exist? Even the pro footage I have seen is down rezzed to 720p at the most and I can’t find any climbing Blu-rays at all.

One more - really shows what you can do with DOF, and a bit more techy background...

http://www.vimeo.com/2053280

Fortunately, unlike many competing video-capable SLRs, the Pentax K-7 has a microphone jack on its left side, to which you can attach an external stereo microphone. Pentax provided a Rode SVM shoe-mounted stereo mic for us to use with the prototype K-7, and we found it to be an excellent addition. It's far from bargain priced, selling for around $250, and it does add noticeably to the bulk of the K-7, but its compliant mounting system pretty much eliminates any transmission of sound from the camera's body to the mic, and recorded sound quality was really excellent, with surprisingly good stereo separation: Listening to videos recorded with it, the sound was remarkably crisp, and we could very clearly locate sound sources spatially. If you plan to use the Pentax K-7 for any serious video recording, we strongly suggest that you invest in an external mic like the Rode SVM.

True Aperture Control with Video!

True aperture control with video! To the best of our knowledge, the Pentax K-7 is the only SLR offering direct aperture control for video recording. (Brightness changes likely due to prototype status of sample unit, didn't appear in final videos.)
While you can control the lens aperture on some competing SLRs by faking-out the exposure system, the Pentax K7 is the first video-capable SLR that we're aware of that lets you set the lens aperture explicitly. You can't adjust it during recording, but whatever value you set before you begin your clip is the one the camera will use. This is a great feature, one that's been sorely lacking in other video-capable SLRs. We really liked the control this gave us over the depth of field of our recorded videos, and liked knowing that the aperture was exactly what we'd set it to, not some value we hoped we'd tricked the camera into using.

With most video-capable DSLRs, even normal hand tremor can produce an unsettling unsteadiness in the video image. Thanks to the Pentax K-7's IS system, your videos will be rock-steady, even in the face of poor camera-holding technique.

When you're shooting on a tripod, you presumably don't need the Pentax K7's Shake Reduction capability, but why let those actuators go to waste? The Pentax K-7 has a feature unlike anything we've seen in any other DSLR camera before: You can use the Shake Reduction actuators to shift and rotate (albeit slightly) the image to make very fine adjustments to composition!

As far as Red. I really don't see Red doing much in the existing market. It seems like Red is designed for a different purpose than the SLR market. Yeah, it's a still motion hybrid system, but it's big, bulky, expensive (although modular), and it's not like Red is coming out of no where with this video in a camera thing...Canon, Nikon, Pentax all have Red in their sites and I'm sure Sony and Olympus aren't far behind!

Red is like $10,000 to start, the K7 is $1199 or 1299, a fully weather sealed with a magnesium body. Basically it's 1D/D3 build at $1300 with video. Then the D90 is a little less and the 5DII a little more, not sure where Red fits in!

King Lines.

Starting at ten grand is nothing special. All of the newer Phase and Leaf backs are starting in the tens of thousands of dollars even without a body or glass.

I don't think anyone is sure where Red fits in yet, but Esquire magazine has already done one magazine cover by pulling a single still from video shot on a Red One video camera. I didn't see the actual printed magazine cover, so I can't speak to the true quality; however, this certainly is a departure from how we have traditionally treated photo shoots.

So far it's not something I'm going to write off, but that's easy to say when I'm two years off of investing in a new camera.

However, some of this stuff is over priced, and while it's true as a working pro (or even a hobbyist to a degree) you can write off your equipment (to a point) it's still out of pocket. Most pros (as in 100% income, not 20 or 10 or 5%) that I work with are cheap bastards. They have gear that is duct taped together, so I'm not 100% sure they don't care about cost at all.

Just a note, the Pentax 645D is coming out in a few months, and it's going to make Phase 1, Leaf, and Hassy shit in their pants.