The best camera of 2012 ... is the camera you already have. That camera will take pictures. Remember taking pictures? It's the whole point of photography.
Nah, plasnu. That might be true when you can run something on the Apple products that Apple doesn't sell, and you certainly couldn't run Photoshop like you could on a laptop. The Surface Pro...
Slik has a carbon fiber model that's really light and will get up to around 64 inches or so before you add a ballhead. I've been using it for a couple of years and I'm satisfied with it.