Amateur photographers from across the UK have voted the Canon EOS 60D as their favourite camera of the year.

(check out our free Canon 60D review video)

Photography experts and readers of Amateur Photographer (AP) magazine weighed in with their opinions on what they thought was the best hardware of the year.

At an awards ceremony held on the weekend the popular DSLR camera beat competition from Sony's Alpha 850 and Nikon's D7000 cameras to be named Enthusiast Camera of the Year.

It then went on the beat all of the winners of all of the other categories to be named the overall Product of the Year.

The magazine's editor, Damien Demolder, who hosted the awards ceremony, said, "We had to determine which product would bring the AP reader the most benefit, and which would be most likely to deliver complete satisfaction."

The 18-million-pixel 60D was launched last August, positioned between the 550D and 7D models. It boasts full HD movie recording (1920x1080 pixels), as well as a 3 inch vari-angle LCD screen, which carries a resolution of 1,040,000 dots. The camera was praised by¨AP's technical team for its combination of high resolution sensor, multiple advanced features, excellent handling and first rate image quality.