Canon EOS D60 - something wrong?

[enaiman]

Being an owner of a Canon 60D, I did notice in another thread about Canon vs Nikon, that some forum members were pretty much against this camers and preferring the earlier 40D or 50D.
Anything wrong about 60D?
I remember I did a fair bit of reading before deciding for it and it did look to me that I've chosen a winner considering price/features/performance.
I will talk about some features which are very useful to me:
- bigger (higher res) LCD screen (1M vs 900k)
- articulated LCD - not using it so much but it did come in handy several times.
- EyeFi (wireless solution) - I did buy an EyeFi Pro card. Sometimes I use my tablet (connects to my camera) to view the newly taken images on a much bigger screen (10'); comes very handy to check for sharpness.
- movie recording - why not?

The only thing I feel is lacking is the number of autofocus points (9) - I wish it had more points or better autofocus. Now that I think about this, I realize that most of the time I am using only the central point for autofocus because by using all of them the results might not be perfect.

This is my opinion on D60; I am pretty sure that there is much more about this camera ... that's why I am asking about.

Thanks,

[Graystar]

I'm not a Canon person but as I recall, the problem wasn't with the 60D as a camera, but as an update to the 40D/50D. The 60D is slightly smaller, lighter, doesn't use a magnesium shell, and lost the joystick. It also doesn't use CF cards, doesn't have a flash sync socket, slower FPS, and has other changes that didn't sit well with 40D/50D users. This left the more expensive 7D as the only upgrade path for 40D/50D users.

Otherwise, as far as I'm aware it's a perfectly fine camera.

[enaiman]

Very good point, I didn't look for any of these features - that would explain why .
... darn tablet, editing text is a big pain sometimes ...

Tkanks for reply.

[Glenn NK]

I'm not a Canon person but as I recall, the problem wasn't with the 60D as a camera, but as an update to the 40D/50D. The 60D is slightly smaller, lighter, doesn't use a magnesium shell, and lost the joystick. It also doesn't use CF cards, doesn't have a flash sync socket, slower FPS, and has other changes that didn't sit well with 40D/50D users. This left the more expensive 7D as the only upgrade path for 40D/50D users.

Otherwise, as far as I'm aware it's a perfectly fine camera.

This sounds much like what I've read. Everyone assumed that the series would go 10D, 20D, 30D, 40D, 50D, 60D. All of which have magnesium frames. I talked to my very knowledgeable dealer and she suggested that Canon purposely "broke the mold" because the 7D had come on the scene - it has the feature list of previous xxD bodies.

Reading the introduction to the review on dpreview, pretty well explains it:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos7d/

Having two top notch prosumer bodies may not have made sense, so they scaled back the 60D a bit.

There's nothing wrong with the 60D. I've handled one in the store, but it does not have the heft of my ancient 30D which has a magnesium frame and is still going strong.

Glenn

[Geoff F]

As Glenn said, there isn't anything inherently wrong with the 60D. It is just about personal preferences when looking for a new camera.

When my trusty 40D died I had to make a decision.

A friend had purchased a 60D but personally I felt that it just didn't have the 'feel' and easy operation of a 40D although in theory it has better specs. More like a 600D than a true successor to the 40D.

I nearly purchased an 'unused' 50D but eventually found a good price on a 7D.

After a bit of experimentation, I realised that I could disable a lot of the 'enhancements' on the 7D to make it operate almost the same as a 40D. And all of the extra things which Eugen mentioned are items which I don't want. Particularly the multi focusing points.

Occasionally, when I need to do a substantial crop, those extra pixels do come in handy but most of the time they just clutter up and slow down my computer so I will either have to upgrade that to match the camera or throw away the extra pixels; which I don't normally want anyway.

[rpcrowe]

Eugen...
I was doing a google search on lag times of various DSLR cameras and came upon these two reviews:

Canon 7D: http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/E7D/E7DA6.HTM
It mentions: "The Canon 7D's full autofocus shutter response is excellent at 0.131 second using our standard single-point AF test: the same lag as the 50D"

Canon 60D http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/E60D/E60DA6.HTM
"The Canon 60D's full autofocus shutter response using our standard single-point AF test was slightly slower than average for an SLR, at 0.253 second."

In actuality, the 7D is faster than the 60D all down the line of tests. What surprised me though, is that the 60D is slower than the 50D. However, I do not know how much difference between .253 second lag for the 60D and .131 second lag for the 50D and 7D would mean. Since it is almost twice the lag time it could mean a difference. However, we could be talking about "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"

In either case, the lag time for the optical eye level viewing is significantly shorter than when using live view. Using live view, you trip your shutter, eat lunch, and then the camera acquires the image after your subject has left the frame...

[enaiman]

Thank Richard for sharing your finding. It does make a big difference for fast moving subjects and if somebody is particularily interested in this type of photo then yes, the D60 would be a no-deal.

I didn't notice it so far (didn't need it so far ) because my subjects are standing still always

I don't like the autofocus so far, many times - even if I am using only the central point - my photos are not sharp enough. It might be the camera, might be my lenses although I do find that I can get sharper pictures with some of them.
The result is - I don't rely too much on autofocus; if I am interested in getting a picture at its best then I use my tripod and focus manually (using Live View and 10x magnification).
Other than that I really like my camera.

I think I'll wait for Canon to add wireless support to a camera before thinking it to buy a new one

[Val Mansfield]

I agonized for weeks deciding between the 60D and the 7D, price was not an issue. As I was not previously using a Canon familiarity with the controls was also not a problem.

I finally opted for the 60D because it seemed to suit my style of photography better. Although I don’t normally use Live View, having an articulated screen was a major plus for me and has enabled me to take several shots which would not otherwise be possible.

Not having a magnesium body doesn’t worry me in the slightest and I suspect that the lens can have a greater impact on auto focus speeds than the body.

I’ve taken several thousand photographs, some with temperatures over 40°C. In the next couple of days I’ll be trying it with temperatures around -25°C; 25° below the stated operating range.

[rpcrowe]

Eugen...

I shot with manual focus film equipment for mor years than I like to remember.

I even skipped the entire generation of Canon Auto Focus EOS film cameras because I was of the opinion that I could do a better and faster job focusing than the camera could.

However, I found out that the autofocus can usually beat me manually focusing; if used correctly. I have had no problems with auto focusing any of my cameras or lenses except for my original 350D which had an auto focus problem that the Canon Service Center fixed...