Canon EOS 60D DSLR

Overall Review

Design and Build Quality

Canon EOS 60D, on paper may have been characterised as a mid-range DSLR category device from Canon. But when you look it from front it resembles the semi-pro line up a lot in terms of build, design and styling. Canon EOS 60D measures 145mm x 106mm x 79 mm and falls right in between Canon EOS 50D and Canon EOS 550D in size. An almost twin to this camera is Nikon’s D7000 which roughly measures the same in terms of height and depth but it is more than 1 cm narrower than the earlier. The mode dial of Canon EOS 60D offers the usual modes like the PASM mode, along with a separate Bulb position and a single Custom mode along with full Auto, Creative Auto, Flash Off, five presets and the Movie mode. In brief, Canon EOS 60D from its predecessor has gained a movie mode; got Bulb promoted to its own promotion and lost one custom mode.

Focus and Face Detection

Canon EOS 60D is the owner of the same 9 point AF system which was on Canon EOS 50D. Each and every point on the device is a cross-type which is sensitive to both horizontal and vertical lines when put on lenses of f5.6 or more. Also the centre point of the device is almost 2 times as sensitive as others when used with a lens aperture which is f2.8 or more. On paper, Canon EOS 60D’s 9 point AF system is crushed by 39 point AF system of Nikon D7000, but in the real word, it doesn’t make that much of a difference.

Lens and Image Stabilization

This is a body only review, so no lens is hoisted. But as such Canon EOS 60D is available with either the budget EF-S 18-55mm IS kit lens, which offers a basic 3x optical range that’s equivalent to 29-88mm, or the more recent EF-S 18-135mm IS which offers a much longer range equivalent to 29-216mm.

Screen and Menus

From a long time Canon did not involve the use of fully articulated screen in any of DSLR to feature a fully articulated screen, but looking at the fortunes earned by rivals, I guess Canon has decide to go the other way in this device and Canon EOS 60D becomes the first Canon DSLR to feature a fully articulated screen. The articulated mount is really the only special thing in Canon EOS 60D’s screen special, it also comes with the superb TFT panel which was seen the very first time on Canon EOS 550D. This panel measures a big 3 inches and applies a wide 3:2 aspect ratio as default, which matches the shape of the images perfectly. Most of the cameras use 4:3 as the default aspect ratio which means that 3:2 images will have black bar over and below them when viewed. Not so on Canon EOS 60D, it fills the screen in Live View or playback.

Battery

The powerhouse of Canon EOS 60D is the same LP-E6 battery which also featured on Canon EOS 7D and EOS 5D Mark II: an 1800mAh Lithium Ion pack which Canon claims is good for up to 1600 shots through the viewfinder without flash, this is really a highly significant increase over Canon EOS 7D which can only provide 1000 shots, given the same condition. The camera also provides an effective 350 minutes of video recording on the device.

Video Mode

Canon EOS 60D now becomes Canon's latest DSLR to offer HD video recording, and shares the same core modes as the Canon EOS 550D and Canon EOS 7D before it. It also features an external microphone input and the ability to manually set audio levels, while the icing on the cake is the fully-articulated screen which allows you to film comfortably at unusual angles.Starting with the actual video quality, the EOS 60D gives you have the choice of filming at either Full HD 1920x1080, HD1280x720 or VGA 640x480 pixels.

Sensors

Canon EOS 60D features an 18 Megapixel CMOS sensor. The physical size and pixel count is certainly identical: the EOS 60D's sensor measures 22.3x14.9mm and generates 3:2 aspect ratio images with a maximum resolution of 5184x3456 pixels. ISO Sensitivity of Canon EOS 60D ranges from a huge 100-12800.

Pros

Excellent photo quality, decent video, good performance overall, great lowlight response. Even if you are new to SLR cameras, you will find this quite easily manageable.

Cons

Live view focusing is slow, but you can set it to use one shot mode in live view, and that will improve the time it take to focus at the expense of momentarily blinking the screen.