NIKON D60 REVIEW I’d like to give you a brief video tour around the Nikon D60 review. Here is its, the D60. It’s Nikon’s latest digital SLR. It’s the successor to the D40X. And in the Nikon’s DSLR range it sits between the entry level D40 and the mid range D80 models. Now if you’re...
Nikon D60 Review We recently got the chance to perform a Nikon D60 review. We’d heard good things about this camera, and its ability to blur the line between consumer and professional camera lines. As far as we’re concerned, this camera deserves every bit of the hype it’s been getting since before it was released....
We recently got the chance to perform a Nikon D60 review. We’d heard good things about this camera, and its ability to blur the line between consumer and professional camera lines. As far as we’re concerned, this camera deserves every bit of the hype it’s been getting since before it was released.
Nikon is known for creating the world’s best cameras. They’re consistently light years ahead of their competition, providing reliable quality with cutting-edge features. Whenever Nikon makes a move, the other brands scramble to catch up. Our Nikon D60 review showed that this camera is a credit to the Nikon name, and maintains their long tradition of quality.
Our Nikon D60 review experience makes us feel pretty confident about recommending this camera. It’s priced attractively, owners are happy with it, and it’s loaded with features that step up the quality of your shots. Whether you’re a professional photographer or just want your pictures to fool people into thinking you are, you can’t go wrong with the Nikon D60.
Nikon D60 Review Video
The Nikon D60 is a compact camera, perfect for anyone who wants more performance than a point-and-shoot without having to lug around a full digital SLR kit. It features a crisp 10.2 MP image sensor. This is a little lower than the DSLR’s standard 12.1, but this camera also gets into those shots that a DSLR can’t. The D60 also features Nikon’s Integrated Dust Reduction System, keeping the lens clean and your images free of dark spots and shadows.
Speaking of shadows, we were very impressed with the Active-D lighting system in our Nikon D60 review. This compensates beautifully for poor lighting conditions, automatically correcting the shadows and highlights that would normally ruin your shots. This is just one of the many features we found in our Nikon D60 review that will eliminate the need for image correction software. The camera’s high image quality makes it easy to enlarge photos without messy editing, and the built-in color system make colors stay true.
I’d like to give you a brief video tour around the Nikon D60 review. Here is its, the D60. It’s Nikon’s latest digital SLR. It’s the successor to the D40X. And in the Nikon’s DSLR range it sits between the entry level D40 and the mid range D80 models.
Now if you’re familiar with the earlier D40X you’ll notice a great deal of similarities with this camera. They share the same 10.2 CCD megapixel sensor. They have the same 2 ½” screen around the back. And they have essentially the same body and control system.
Nikon D60 Review Video
Features on the Nikon D60 Review
So what’s new with the D60? First of all, there’s a proximity sensor beneath the viewfinder. This can detect when you’re actually looking through the viewfinder and switch off the screen automatically. Secondly, the screen may be the same size and resolutions as its predecessor but Nikon’s taken a leaf out of Sony’s book and it can now rotate the information when you turn the camera to shoot in the portrait orientation. This ensures that the numbers and letters are always upright.
Internally the D60 now offers optional active D-lighting. This is a feature borrowed from Nikon’s high end DSLRs that adjusts the total range of your image immediately after you take it. This can be used to preserve details that would otherwise be washed out in bright highlight areas or lost in dark shadows. Here’s an example that we took using a D60 (see video). This is a picture taken indoors without active D-lighting. And now exactly the same picture taken moments later with active D-lighting activated. And as you can see it’s brightened up some of those darker areas in the roof.
Truly the biggest physical difference between the D60 and its predecessor though is the inclusion of anti dust facilities which was surely missing in the earlier D40X. Now the D60 actually has 2 different ways to combat dust.
The first is similar to many of the DSLRs these days, it can vibrate the low pass filter in front of the sensor in an attempt to shake free any foreign particles. But the D60 goes one step further. It’s the first DSLR by Nikon to feature its brand new airflow system. This exploits the air pressure within the body of the DSLR when you take a picture. As the mirror flips up and down again air pressure within the body can now be used to force the particles out to some air ducts that are built within the lens mounts. See how effective these anti dust facilities are in practice.
Now one of the big difference between the D60 and its predecessor, and that’s the reason to buy this camera, is that it comes with an optically stabilized kit lens. (And I’ve got that lens mounted on the D60 right now) This is the new DX 18-55mm VR lens. It features built-in vibration reduction facilities that use an element within the lens to counteract camera shake. And because it’s built in to the lens you can see the effect through the optical viewfinder. So when you’re taking a picture with VR enabled, the image is very steady in the viewfinder. It will actually let you hand hold pictures 3-4 times slower than normal and that’s a very useful feature to have in practice.
Nikon D60 Review of its Ergonomics
Right now though, let’s have a closer look at some of the D60’s controls. On the upper right surface of the D60 you’ll find the main command dial which as you can see offers auto, program, shutter and aperture priority mode, full manual and a selection of scenes in presets. Towards the front of the grip you’ll find the shutter release button with the on off switch. And beside there are 2 buttons. The one on the right is to activate the exposure compensation and the one on the left is to adjust the active D-lighting mode. You’ll see that this is one of the few external changes you’ll see on the D60 compared to its predecessor, the D40X.
Around the back you’ll see the same 2 ½” screen as the D40X and also the same 4 way control here. You’ll notice that, unlike most budget DSLRs, this control does not double up to offer direct access to fitting like the white balance or the sensitivity. To do that you’ll have to navigate the menus and I’ll show you that in just a moment. (see video)
To the side of the body you’ll find the compartment for the memory card. And like all budget DSLRs these days, the D60 takes SD memory. On the underside of the body you’ll find the compartment for the battery. Again, the same as the D40X it’s an EN-EL9 lithium ion pack. On the other side of the body you’ll find a flap behind which are the ports for the D60. At the top the TV output and at the bottom the USB port. Now the D60 does not come with the cable to connect to your TV. That’s an optional extra.
If I run the D60 now to the image sensor cleaning animation, you’ll be presented with the main settings on the screen. On the left hand side you’ll see there’s a graphical representation of the iris within the lens. And as we increase the F number here in aperture priority mode you’ll see that iris gets smaller and smaller. It’s actually a representation of what’s going on in the lens right now.
If you don’t like the information presented this way, you can go into the menu and choose something a bit more traditional looking. There’s a choice of 3 colors, and what you’re now presented with is the shooting information in a more traditional styles more like the screen on the top of the semi pro DSLRs.(see video)
In the bottom left corner you’ll see the flashing question mark. If you press the question mark button in the D60 it will give you warnings. For example at the moment it’s saying that the lighting is poor and it recommends the flash. It’s a very friendly camera.
To change any settings you press the i button and this highlights the settings around the edges with yellow. Simply press OK if you find the one you want and press the options. There you can change the white balance or perhaps you want to change the ISO sensitivity. And you’ll notice that as we actually change this there’s a different thumbnail next to each setting giving you an idea of how you might use that setting.
Now let’s go to play mode. Here’s a picture we took earlier and by pressing the up and down buttons on the back you can cycle through pages of shooting information. You can also flash the areas that are going to be saturated highlights or show a brightness histogram. There’s no RGB histogram as a standard, but there’s a sneaky way you can show them. Pop into the retouch menu, scroll down to filter effects and then choose the color balance mode. Now choose the picture that you want and there you can see red, green and blue histograms along with the opportunity to actually adjust the color balance on the picture.
There are a lot of other filter effects on the D60 including a new stopper effect but we are now going to look at the raw processing options. This allows you to select a raw file and actually process it within the camera. You can vary the image quality, you can adjust the white balance, you can play with the exposure compensation and you can also set the optimization image parameter before the end processing of the file into a jpeg.
D60 Movie Mode
This is the new feature for the D60 – it allows you to create a movie. Here you can choose the resolution and also the frame rate with a maximum of 15 frames per second.
The way this works is you have to actually choose which images you want to be part of the movie. So here we’re choosing the first image and now scrolling through the pictures that we took earlier until we get to the maximum of 100 pictures. Now it’s important that each of these pictures you have to take manually.
Here we were taking a picture of the sky every minute to be able to do this animation. Once you’re ready you can preview the movie. This takes about a minute to run so we’re going to fast forward to the end and show you how it looks (see video). So here’s our animation at a 100 frames with 15 frames per second would only last for 6 seconds. So already the movie’s over. However you can choose to go back in this frame rate options and choose a slower frame rate perhaps 6 frames per second. Now let’s see how that looks. The movie is extended to a length of 16 seconds. Now that’s obviously jerkier but it still looks pretty good. Although it’s a bit of a pain taking all of those pictures manually. We have to press the button every minute here for a hundred minutes to produce this sequence.
Summary of the Nikon D60 Review
The Nikon D60 may not be a world apart from its predecessor, the D40X, but it remains a good, solid entry level camera. It’s also an ideal model for anyone buying their first DSLR. It’s very easy to use and produces great quality photos using the automatic settings.
In terms of the new features there’s nothing truly ground breaking but it’s really nice to pair to buy the D60 with the stabilized kit lens. And we highly recommend that you do that. If you’re going for the D60 look out for the version that comes with the 18-55mm VR lens. That’s the one with stabilization and it’s worth paying the extra for it.
But being so closely based on the D40X though, the D60 inherits that camera’s downsides. Most notably a fairly basic 3 point auto focus and also an inability to auto focus with some older party lenses. Now that sort of thing is likely to bother the first time DSLR owner. But if you’re an enthusiast on a budget it could bother you in the future. And it’s very important to weigh up these features when you’re looking on buying a DSLR and that’s what we’ve done in our full review. Find out if this is the ideal first DSLR camera for you.
If you would like more information than our Nikon D60 review has provided, please watch the video above.
