My brother's camera

I'm guessing that right now, a review is pretty pointless.  The Canon 60D has been around for awhile and everyone knows it's a great camera.  But seriously guys, it's a great camera.

I took it out for brunch with Rebecca where she decided to test her 5D and we made fools of ourselves scrambling around in the cafe to get the best light.  It was so worth it though.  With a Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 tacked onto it, the 60D gives beautiful colour and clarity and in natural light, a lovely organic tone to photos that I don't seem to get with Big (unless I'm doing something wrong with the white balance).  I also like that the ISO comes in much smaller increments and can be pushed higher without too much consequence, and that the aperture can be controlled by a separate wheel from the shutter speed.

Not so fond of: the slightly finicky ISO function, the fact that the screen doesn't flip out and the difficulty that I seem to have with the sensitive button-and-wheel system on the back of the camera.  The Tamron's auto-focusing is also a little slow, so I spent a lot of time squinting through the crosshairs and trying to manual focus on quickly moving objects.  All in though, I really like it and I hope my brother can be persuaded to loan it out more often!

Rebecca's 5D with its Canon EF 28-70 f/2.8 takes incredible pictures.  The light and colour on these is clean and bright and the bokeh is deliciously warm and creamy.  It is ridiculously heavy though; the lens is as big as her head!

In between taking pictures, we managed to eat the broccoli that we had been yearning after for so long.  Public service announcement: it's as good as I remember. 

We had the salmon and greek yoghurt, a zucchini salad and an extra helping of broccoli.  The desserts looked amazing so we also shared a chocolate passionfruit cake and a slice of pear and amaretto loaf, which is better than it sounds.

And, of course, coffee. 

Stuffed, we finally stumbled out onto the street and started walking towards the train station.  Rebecca kindly but reluctantly modelled for me along the way.  She complains that I frequently get pictures of her in unglamorous poses (I do) when she's crouching on the floor or schlepping along in her slippers, so I made an effort this time to make it look a little more Lonely Planet and a little less lonely pariah.

I know, right?