Chase Jarvis Road Tests the Nikon D7000, Makes Benevolent Mischief

Nikon is getting ready to roll out a new dSLR and Seattle-based photographer Chase Jarvis was the lucky bastard to get to play around with it before anyone else had a look. Instead of grabbing the D7000 and taking thousands of shots of cute kittens, he gathered some friends, a remote controlled helicopter (omfg!), a score performed by Joshua Roman, and a white cargo van to make a film in Seattle that pushed the camera’s HD video capabilities.

Aside from being a nice little movie (to me, it reads as a clever counterpoint to the one that announced the high end Canon 5D Mark II), the clip and its associated blog entry  does exactly what I’m sure the honchos at Nikon hoped: it already gearheads drooling over specs and queuing to preorder one for themselves. An unintentional side effect of the tech hype, though, might be showing off some worthy Seattle bands like Sera Cahoone, Head Like a Kite, and Victor Shade whose music appears in amazing road test video‘s soundtrack.

• Jarvis exhibits his Seattle 100: Portrait of a City book project next month as part of CityArtsFest.