Canon EOS 60D in India

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Canon EOS 60D in India

Posted On : Aug-15-2011 | seen (567) times | Article Word Count : 1532 |

The 60D is reasonably fast at 5.3 fps in continuous fire (burst) mode, but slower than the speedier 8 fps that the 7D churns out. However, there are other aspects of speed, and burst mode is only useful for sports photographers or someone looking to shoot wildlife, where a string of photographs might tell a story. The 60D is slower than the 7D across the board.

Live view is slower, toggling between image mode and video mode is slower with the display blacking out for a whole two seconds. Focussing is also slightly slower, and in lower light, this becomes more noticeable. Obviously, the focussing system is inferior, but we didn't expect it to be much slower. Where speed is critical to get or miss a shot, the 7D should be preferred. However, even with one Digic 4 processor less, the 60D is no slouch in its own right. Camera on to shot is extremely fast, and in less than a second, you can click off a shot.

The LCD viewfinder is pretty good, in fact about as good as we've seen. The 1,040,000 dot display means its plenty sharp, and crisp, and minimal zooming is required to check sharpness of an image. Incidentally, burst mode will have the first flurry of photos taken quickly, then, as the camera runs out of available buffer, the speed slows down till the buffer has written enough to the memory card to accept more data.

And now a word on the de facto kit lens - it offers good sharpness, reasonable even in the corners, especially considering the lens is available for around Rs. 6,000 - practically a give-away. However, it doesn't hold up to better glass very well, and if you're serious, you ought to consider ditching the kit and opting for something like the 15~85 IS USM lens - it's much costlier, but has a more practical focal range, and offers better colour, sharpness and such.

The battery is hefty, the same one as the EOS 7D, rated at 1,800 mAh. Canon states battery life to be over 1,000 shots, we found that clicking some 150 shots with flash used one fifth of the time hardly drained any juice, and the battery still showed 82 per cent charge - pretty good. You certainly won't need to carry a spare, unless you're going on a long trek.

Image Quality

This is pretty much bread and butter for any dSLR. And this is where the 60D proverbially kicks butt. It is capable of producing brilliant results, in fact the output of the 60D is clean, neutral and full of details. One of the advantages of cramming 18 megapixels on to a smaller 1.6x crop sensor is the sharpness. The 60D produces very sharp images in good and mediocre lighting.

There is a lot of detail visible and the high resolution helps. The tradeoff is usually lower performance in low-light, owing to high density of photodiodes, but the 60D survives this techincal restriction rather well. Even in low light, and higher ISO's, images retain a lot of detail - it's obvious that the 7D sensor is working its magic on the output of the 60D as well.

Even at ISO 1600, the 60D manages a lot of detail, with some smearing of detail happening in darker regions of the image, and with a bit of grain. At ISO 3200, the 60D leaves the 50D behind by a big margin, proving that a current-gen, 18-megapixel is a lot better than a 15-megapixel unit of yesteryear. If you shoot in RAW, you will be able to extract even more detail.

The Canon EOS 60D seems to be less sharp than the EOS 7D in corners, mind you, we're not talking about focus, but overall sharpness. This seems to be in part due to the kit lens. Check out the 7D's performance results here. Canon supplied us with the standard 18~55 kit lens, which is an entry-level one, and not up to the 15~85 lens we were using on the EOS 7D. Swapping lenses, we see the 60D sharpen up at the corners, however, not as sharp as the 7D, where depth appears more pleasing.

The 18~55 lens is plagued by vignetting as well as chromatic aberration in moderate doses. Not only that, the 60D's focussing system seems a bit dumber, simply choosing to focus on whatever the closest object in the frame, compared to the 7D's focussing system that seems almost intelligent - focussing uncannily on the desired object. Also from ISO 640 onwards, the 60D exhibits slightly more noise on a per-pixel level than the 7D, images have slightly more grain, we double checked to make sure, and the difference, although small, is present.

Although an unfair comparison, the 60D as good as it is, cannot match the low light output of the EOS 5D Mark 2. However, comparing a 70,000-rupee crop body to a Rs. 1,25,000 full-frame body is silly, and the Mark 2 easily gains a one stop advantage, possibly two, as even ISO 3200 is relatively noise free. If you plan on shooting in low light, your best bet is still a full-frame dSLR, as the difference between 60D and 7D is minimal, and the 7D is about as good as it gets for a crop.

Let's talk about shooting in better light and dynamic range. The 60D has an option called "highlight tone priority", and turning this on results in more details in bright areas of a scene, by applying a lower amplification algorithm to the sensors signal. Highlighting is good, and the 60D produces life-like highlights on objects, although with the aforementioned mode turned off, bright regions look a little overblown, as the 60D tends to overexpose them, losing some detail.

Full frames aside, the 60D provides very good image quality up to ISO 800 and at ISO 1600, you can make fairly large prints, certainly full screen viewing is very possible. At ISO 3200 things suddenly get noisier, although there is still a fair bit of detail, with only grain showing up in darker regions and a some off-coloured pixels. ISO 6400 is usable for small crops, but at this point, you lose a fair bit of details. This is pretty much in line with the performance of the EOS 7D.

For those who scoff, remember that with film Digital Cameras, ISO 800 film was pretty much used onlyin emergencies. The flash performance of the 60D is pretty good, with good exposure, but it tends to fail as a good fill, meaning the difference between the subject and the environment is a little extreme. Ideally a flash should be subtle, and the 60D is a little too blatant, but then, so was the 7D - Canon's external flashguns are an alternative, albeit a costly one, that most amateurs will not bother with.

Our Take

At Rs. 77,195, for the body and a 18~55 kit lens, the 60D is somehow costlier than what we expected when we first opened the box and clicked a few shots. And that's a bad thing - for some products just feel worth their price. However, it is a very competent camera, offering very good image quality and equally impressive low-light performance, that would have been unthinkable on crop bodies two years ago. Both RAW and JPEG images have a lot of detail and on these points alone, its hightly recommended. However, it's not perfect.

The iffy ergonomics are aimed at making it more usable to the newbie crowd who are graduating from a point-n-shoot, where a wealth of buttons and controls would only overwhelm. However, Canon has a missed a point, for users graduating from a basic Canon or Nikon body, or advanced users looking for a second, lighter crop body to go with their full frames, the 60D isn't exactly first choice.

After all, you get a 550D that does nearly as much, with maybe a smidgeon lower performance at ISO 1600 and upwards, that costs around Rs. 47,000 on the lower side. On the upper side, there's the EOS 7D with vastly improved ergonomics and build quality, with a definite advantage in the focussing system, and a very slight advantage in low light, and dynamic range. The price difference between the 60D and 7D is not huge, but at around Rs. 15,000, we reckon a lot of enthusiast users will opt for the costlier model.

Unless the articulated LCD appeals to you, and you want something smaller and lighter than the 7D. Neither will 50D users consider the 60D, more like they'll save up for the 7D, or better glass. Considering Nikon's D7000, the 60D has a fight on its hands, but the D7000 seems to have inherited ergonomics from the D90, whereas the 60D isn't quite pro or amateur - an interesting divide to attempt to straddle. It's a great camera, but we feel the sale figures not make Canon as happy.

Specifications: Sensor: 18-megapixel CMOS 22.3 x 14.9 mm ; Focussing: 9-cross point; 3-inch, 10,40,000 dots; weight: 755 grams; battery: 1800 mAh

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<h1>Canon EOS 60D in India</h1> Author: <a href='http://www.articleseen.com/profile_Robert Blume.aspx'>Robert Blume</a> The 60D is reasonably fast at 5.3 fps in continuous fire (burst) mode, but slower than the speedier 8 fps that the 7D churns out. However, there are other aspects of speed, and burst mode is only useful for sports photographers or someone looking to shoot wildlife, where a string of photographs might tell a story. The 60D is slower than the 7D across the board.

Live view is slower, toggling between image mode and video mode is slower with the display blacking out for a whole two seconds. Focussing is also slightly slower, and in lower light, this becomes more noticeable. Obviously, the focussing system is inferior, but we didn't expect it to be much slower. Where speed is critical to get or miss a shot, the 7D should be preferred. However, even with one Digic 4 processor less, the 60D is no slouch in its own right. Camera on to shot is extremely fast, and in less than a second, you can click off a shot.

The LCD viewfinder is pretty good, in fact about as good as we've seen. The 1,040,000 dot display means its plenty sharp, and crisp, and minimal zooming is required to check sharpness of an image. Incidentally, burst mode will have the first flurry of photos taken quickly, then, as the camera runs out of available buffer, the speed slows down till the buffer has written enough to the memory card to accept more data.

And now a word on the de facto kit lens - it offers good sharpness, reasonable even in the corners, especially considering the lens is available for around Rs. 6,000 - practically a give-away. However, it doesn't hold up to better glass very well, and if you're serious, you ought to consider ditching the kit and opting for something like the 15~85 IS USM lens - it's much costlier, but has a more practical focal range, and offers better colour, sharpness and such.

The battery is hefty, the same one as the EOS 7D, rated at 1,800 mAh. Canon states battery life to be over 1,000 shots, we found that clicking some 150 shots with flash used one fifth of the time hardly drained any juice, and the battery still showed 82 per cent charge - pretty good. You certainly won't need to carry a spare, unless you're going on a long trek.

Image Quality

This is pretty much bread and butter for any dSLR. And this is where the 60D proverbially kicks butt. It is capable of producing brilliant results, in fact the output of the 60D is clean, neutral and full of details. One of the advantages of cramming 18 megapixels on to a smaller 1.6x crop sensor is the sharpness. The 60D produces very sharp images in good and mediocre lighting.

There is a lot of detail visible and the high resolution helps. The tradeoff is usually lower performance in low-light, owing to high density of photodiodes, but the 60D survives this techincal restriction rather well. Even in low light, and higher ISO's, images retain a lot of detail - it's obvious that the 7D sensor is working its magic on the output of the 60D as well.

Even at ISO 1600, the 60D manages a lot of detail, with some smearing of detail happening in darker regions of the image, and with a bit of grain. At ISO 3200, the 60D leaves the 50D behind by a big margin, proving that a current-gen, 18-megapixel is a lot better than a 15-megapixel unit of yesteryear. If you shoot in RAW, you will be able to extract even more detail.

The Canon EOS 60D seems to be less sharp than the EOS 7D in corners, mind you, we're not talking about focus, but overall sharpness. This seems to be in part due to the kit lens. Check out the 7D's performance results here. Canon supplied us with the standard 18~55 kit lens, which is an entry-level one, and not up to the 15~85 lens we were using on the EOS 7D. Swapping lenses, we see the 60D sharpen up at the corners, however, not as sharp as the 7D, where depth appears more pleasing.

The 18~55 lens is plagued by vignetting as well as chromatic aberration in moderate doses. Not only that, the 60D's focussing system seems a bit dumber, simply choosing to focus on whatever the closest object in the frame, compared to the 7D's focussing system that seems almost intelligent - focussing uncannily on the desired object. Also from ISO 640 onwards, the 60D exhibits slightly more noise on a per-pixel level than the 7D, images have slightly more grain, we double checked to make sure, and the difference, although small, is present.

Although an unfair comparison, the 60D as good as it is, cannot match the low light output of the EOS 5D Mark 2. However, comparing a 70,000-rupee crop body to a Rs. 1,25,000 full-frame body is silly, and the Mark 2 easily gains a one stop advantage, possibly two, as even ISO 3200 is relatively noise free. If you plan on shooting in low light, your best bet is still a full-frame dSLR, as the difference between 60D and 7D is minimal, and the 7D is about as good as it gets for a crop.

Let's talk about shooting in better light and dynamic range. The 60D has an option called "highlight tone priority", and turning this on results in more details in bright areas of a scene, by applying a lower amplification algorithm to the sensors signal. Highlighting is good, and the 60D produces life-like highlights on objects, although with the aforementioned mode turned off, bright regions look a little overblown, as the 60D tends to overexpose them, losing some detail.

Full frames aside, the 60D provides very good image quality up to ISO 800 and at ISO 1600, you can make fairly large prints, certainly full screen viewing is very possible. At ISO 3200 things suddenly get noisier, although there is still a fair bit of detail, with only grain showing up in darker regions and a some off-coloured pixels. ISO 6400 is usable for small crops, but at this point, you lose a fair bit of details. This is pretty much in line with the performance of the EOS 7D.

For those who scoff, remember that with film Digital Cameras, ISO 800 film was pretty much used onlyin emergencies. The flash performance of the 60D is pretty good, with good exposure, but it tends to fail as a good fill, meaning the difference between the subject and the environment is a little extreme. Ideally a flash should be subtle, and the 60D is a little too blatant, but then, so was the 7D - Canon's external flashguns are an alternative, albeit a costly one, that most amateurs will not bother with.

Our Take

At Rs. 77,195, for the body and a 18~55 kit lens, the 60D is somehow costlier than what we expected when we first opened the box and clicked a few shots. And that's a bad thing - for some products just feel worth their price. However, it is a very competent camera, offering very good image quality and equally impressive low-light performance, that would have been unthinkable on crop bodies two years ago. Both RAW and JPEG images have a lot of detail and on these points alone, its hightly recommended. However, it's not perfect.

The iffy ergonomics are aimed at making it more usable to the newbie crowd who are graduating from a point-n-shoot, where a wealth of buttons and controls would only overwhelm. However, Canon has a missed a point, for users graduating from a basic Canon or Nikon body, or advanced users looking for a second, lighter crop body to go with their full frames, the 60D isn't exactly first choice.

After all, you get a 550D that does nearly as much, with maybe a smidgeon lower performance at ISO 1600 and upwards, that costs around Rs. 47,000 on the lower side. On the upper side, there's the EOS 7D with vastly improved ergonomics and build quality, with a definite advantage in the focussing system, and a very slight advantage in low light, and dynamic range. The price difference between the 60D and 7D is not huge, but at around Rs. 15,000, we reckon a lot of enthusiast users will opt for the costlier model.

Unless the articulated LCD appeals to you, and you want something smaller and lighter than the 7D. Neither will 50D users consider the 60D, more like they'll save up for the 7D, or better glass. Considering Nikon's D7000, the 60D has a fight on its hands, but the D7000 seems to have inherited ergonomics from the D90, whereas the 60D isn't quite pro or amateur - an interesting divide to attempt to straddle. It's a great camera, but we feel the sale figures not make Canon as happy.

Specifications: Sensor: 18-megapixel CMOS 22.3 x 14.9 mm ; Focussing: 9-cross point; 3-inch, 10,40,000 dots; weight: 755 grams; battery: 1800 mAhAbout the Author: Robert Blume is a well known author and has written articles on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.thinkdigit.com/Digital-Cameras-ca-35.php">Digital Cameras</a>, <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.consumermate.com/mobile-phones.html">3g mobile phones in india</a>, Sony Ericsson Mobile, <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.consumermate.com/mobile-phones/best-maxx-mobiles.html">maxx mobile</a> and many other subjects.
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Robert Blume is a well known author and has written articles on Digital Cameras, 3g mobile phones in india, Sony Ericsson Mobile, maxx mobile and many other subjects.

Keywords : canon eos 60d, canon eos 60d price in india, canon digital camera,

Category : Product Reviews : Digital Products

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