If you're looking for the flexibility of an SLR and top image quality, the D60 makes the grade.
The D60's comparatively large 6.3-megapixel CMOS sensor gives it terrific image quality, and the camera is as fast and flexible as a well-designed midlevel to advanced SLR should be. If you've been waiting for digital SLRs to match their film- based cousins or are tired of the image-quality limitations of your so-called prosumer digital point-and-shoot, the D60 could be just what you're looking for.
The D60's hybrid polycarbonate/stainless steel chassis is covered by a mostly polycarbonate shell, which keeps its weight to a moderate 771 grams with battery and CompactFlash card installed (but without a lens attached). We'd call the camera's styling functional rather than handsome. Fit, finish, sturdiness, and control are good--typical of well- made mid- to upper-level SLR cameras but a notch below a true professional-class SLR.
Thanks to a well-designed grip, the D60 fits very comfortably in the hand, and its essential controls--exposure compensation, shutter speed and aperture dials, and the like--are well placed for fast, efficient advanced photography. We were mildly disappointed by the slightly skimpy viewfinder information display, which shows crucial exposure data very clearly but doesn't show metering mode, current white-balance setting, or an adequate indication of shots remaining.
We're also lukewarm about the camera's menu system. It displays as a simple, vertically scrolling list of all 23 adjustable functions, and it's not context sensitive. You get the same list, in the same order, regardless of whether you're currently recording images or reviewing already captured pictures. That said, you can navigate the list quickly, and the various settings are clearly labeled and easy to adjust.
Its 6.3-megapixel resolution unquestionably tops the D60's feature list. The sensor is a CMOS chip, rather than the more common CCD, and its image area measures 22.7mm by 15.1mm--about 40 percent of the area of a 35mm film frame but roughly five times larger than the area of a typical 5-megapixel consumer digicam CCD. The bigger chip means bigger pixels, which allow higher ISO equivalents and produce much cleaner images with better dynamic range and less electronic noise.
Equally important, the D60 is part of Canon's extensive EOS camera system, meaning you can mount any of more than 50 interchangeable EOS lenses to it. Because of the size of the camera's sensor, any lens mounted to the D60 provides the angle of view that a lens of 1.6X or greater focal length gives on a 35mm film camera. Thus, Canon's widest- angle EOS lens, the 14mm, when used on the D60, gives the angle of view of a 22mm lens on 35mm film cameras.
Well-implemented exposure options and settings abound on the D60, including all four major exposure modes, five scene modes, shutter speeds from Bulb to 1/4,000 of a second, and automatic exposure bracketing. The six preset white-balance settings are easy to access, but we found the manual white-balance function, which requires you to designate a saved photo as your white-balance reference, to be needlessly complex for on-the-spot corrections. However, this system can be extremely useful under studio conditions.
The D60 can save images as JPEGs at six different resolution/compression combinations. All JPEGs are processed into the sRGB color space, a mild limitation compared to some competing cameras that offer a range of color-space choices. The camera will also save RAW files, but the software that Canon includes for converting RAW files to full-color photo images is fairly rudimentary, offering good white-balance adjustment but little else. Still, decent third-party RAW conversion applications are available for D60 files.
Like its feature set, the D60's performance is typical of midlevel SLRs, meaning it will seem amazingly good to anyone coming from a point-and-shoot digicam but lackluster if you shoot professional sports for a living. The camera's autofocus (AF) system isn't cutting edge, but it's quick and decisive in the vast majority of normal shooting situations. It does a good job follow-focusing in events such as kids' sports, but pro-level AF SLR cameras clearly outperform it with fast-moving subjects and in very low light.
In continuous drive mode, the D60 can shoot three frames per second (fps) for eight shots before it pauses, but it doesn't wait to clear the whole buffer before it resumes shooting, so you can keep on firing at a pretty good clip. Shutter lag is very short but not as short as that of a pro SLR.
The viewfinder, which shows about 95 percent of the actual image area, gives a reasonably bright and large image, though it's a notch below viewfinders on the best film SLRs. The 1.8- inch LCD is sharp and quite usable in bright daylight. If you're accustomed to fixed-lens digicams, you might be surprised to find that the D60's LCD works for image review and menus only, not as a viewfinder, but that's standard for digital SLRs.
The guide number of the D60's built-in flash is 39 feet (at ISO 100), but one of the advantages of a digital SLR is the ability to use more powerful and flexible external flashes. The D60 can use Canon EX-series Speedlites in E-TTL mode or third-party flashes in manual or regular autoflash modes. Flash sync speed is 1/200 of a second, and there's a PC terminal for triggering studio flashes. Notable flash features include flash exposure compensation, flash exposure bracketing, and wireless E-TTL multiflash (with compatible Canon Speedlites).
The very low noise produced by the D60's large pixels, combined with the sensor's high resolution, yields exceptionally smooth, highly detailed images with rich and accurate colors. The camera's evaluative metering produced good ambient light exposures most of the time, but the flash exposure system, while still fairly capable, was less consistent. To be fair, that's a common problem with digital SLRs. As good as the D60's images are, digital artifacts such as moiré and color fringing still crop up in some pictures, though much more rarely than with consumer digicams.
The large pixels of the D60's sensor also help to overcome one of the biggest drawbacks of consumer digicams: the lack of high ISO capability. Though our ISO 1000 test shots from the D60 show visible noise, the images are quite usable and print nicely.
So how good is good? It's risky to make direct comparisons between digital and film, but we think that for most types of photos printed up to about 16x20 inches, the D60's images will be almost indistinguishable from those captured on 35mm film.
Canon EOS D60
Company: Canon Australia
Price: AU$4999
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 1800 021 167
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