Shutter lifecycle is irrelevant. Almost nobody ever wears out a shutter on any DSLR, let alone a consumer model,
Not so: Shooting brackets (3+ shutter cycles per shot), focus stacking (10-20+ cycles) and using live view with quick af (one cycle very af action) I'm now on 125k cycles on my 60d after about two years.
I wrote, "
almost nobody." Clearly, there are people who wear out a shutter. But very few.
And, I'll also note: it's taken you two years to reach the official shutter count, and you've probably got at least another year, quite reasonably two, left before your 60D will need a replacement shutter. You, one of the exceptional people who might actually wear out a shutter, are probably going to wind up spending an average cost of about $0.25 / day on the camera's shutter. Over the course of a month, it'll cost you less than many spend on a single drink at Starbucks. I hardly think that qualifies as something that should even be on anybody's radar.
Dual memory card slots are irrelevant to all but a very small minority of shooters, too...essentially, the only ones who care are those who need a redundant backup, and they're all shooting with two bodies anyway.
That doesn't make sense: Another body doesn't protect you from card failure, i.e. coming home and the data isn't readable but the camera thought it was written just fine. For many, no dual cards disqualifies a 70d or 6d as a backup body for a "pro" first camera 7d2/5d3 - probably what Canon intends.
I'll agree that dual cards are useful for backups for professionals doing event photography. I just don't see the 70D positioned as such a camera.
Look at it this way: the difference in price between what's listed in this rumor and the 7D from reputable retailers is $50. What pro is even going to bother to pretend that the 70D is a reasonable alternative to a 7D? If you're making money at this and $50 is going to sway your decision, you're not going to be making money for long. The price difference between the 5DII and the 5DIII is $500, again not enough to be a factor in a business decision -- if you can't afford the extra $500, you're in the worng business. (Not that you should just blindly get the more expensive camera, just that price should be pretty far down on your list of decision-making criteria. If you don't need anything that the extra $500 gets you, don't spend the $500. But if anything that extra $500 gets you will be useful, you shouldn't be hesitating to get it just because it's an extra $500.)
Cheers,
b&
