350D to 60D

:O

Behold! The Glory!

It's so big!

It's actually very light, the weight is all in my lens. It's far far bigger than the 350D and makes it look like a toy. The viewfinder is mucchhhh better for my bad eyesight. The buttons do feel mushy. But it does feel several generations better and I can't even turn the thing on yet because the battery is charging.

It cost just over half of what the 350D did when I got it. Hopefully it also lasts 5-6 years for me like the 350D has (which is still going strong at 38000 shots). I've just really started to notice the 350D having trouble focusing, not metering properly, and very noisy at ISO 400 which limits its usefulness to daylights hours. Hopefully this fixes all that :)

The 600D was about $150-200 cheaper and is very similar to the 60D except for the auto focusing system. I paid extra to get the 60D's AF so I shouldn't get as many throwaways. The 7D is better again in the AF department but it was also $300-400 extra and apparently it can struggle sometimes compared to the 60D. The battery on the 60D is supposed to last far longer than the 600D/7D too.

Yesterday I noticed the cheapest place in Bangkok I could find had pushed it's price up another 2000baht to 29900. Apparently the Japanese earthquake and floods in Thailand have combined to make a shortage of some cameras (this could all be rumour) so I guess that was why. As I saw on the shelves, only two stores I went to in Chiang Mai had any in stock and I tried Pantip Plaza, Den Chai Trading, the big Photobug and everywhere in Airport Plaza. Photobug in Airport Plaza and digital2home were the only ones with the camera. Photobug quoted 26900 for the body only, and digital2home said 29500 with an 8gb SD card. I went with Digital2home mainly because they had shops in Bangkok which could service the camera if anything went wrong. If I was based in Chiang Mai then Photobug is the obvious winner.

(also, yes, I understand the financial ridiculousness of being able to buy another camera while on a very very long holiday... But it only knocks about a month off my permanent holidays (I think))