The local girl scouts held their annual International Day event this weekend. Each troop gets assigned a different country; they all dress up in their idea of a national costume, set up pavilions in a big square, parade around the square, and then sell food samples to each other and to their parents and siblings for a dime apiece from their pavilions. My daughter's troop ended up with Indonesia; for their costumes they all wore sarongs (with whatever tops they felt like) and for their food samples they sold klepon, sweet coconut rice-flour -dough balls stuffed with palm sugar and tasting sort of like coconut mochi. A good time was had by all, I think. Photos here.

This was my fifth International Day; photos from past years' events are here, here, here, and here.

On the subject of photography, I finally decided my old D60 was getting tired and replaced it with a Canon 40D, so this weekend's photos may be the last batch from the old camera. The newer one has 60% more pixels, 60% more light-gathering ability, twice the burst rate, and much better autofocus (the D60's weakest point). I chose a package that also included Canon's 17-85 kit lens; when I can do so, I'd rather use primes or my 70-200IS, as I'm sure the optical quality on the 17-85 isn't quite as good and it won't open as wide, but it should make a very good travel lens.




Comments:

None: about 17-85
2008-05-06T09:49:59Z
Lens is fairly low weight and small, but yeah optical quality is not it's strongest feature. I used it on my 400D on a conference trip to Singapore, found it usefull but fairly dark. Now I am using Tammy 28-75 and am much happier B-)
11011110: Re: about 17-85
2008-05-06T15:10:17Z
Thanks. The most attractive feature of this lens for me was the wide angles; 28-75 wouldn't do that unless I went to a much more expensive body.
None: thank you
2008-05-07T19:36:45Z
well done, guy