Canon EOS 60D

After being a photographer and videomaker for a while I'd noticed the significant leap in video quality and felt it was time to upgrade the the wonderful world of HD. My previous video camera was by no means a cheap one and good as the video quality was, it was apples and oranges compared to these new DSLR's that are popping up in more recent years. And this is why this review is going to be a little strange. I didnt buy this camera as a camera that shot HD video. I bought it as a HD video camera that could take photos as a bonus.

" Why on earth would you do this ?? " might be your first thought - and you'd be right. The reason being that I already have a Canon EOS-1D Mark III as my photography camera. 10 frames per second of blazingly fast autofocus powered bliss, and has been since I got it in 2007. For my line of work, 10mp has always been just fine for me but having an extra 8mp of resolution certainly isnt doing my new photos any harm. I found a lot of nice suprises using the 60D as both a HD video camera as well as a camera and this review is going to be a mix of a comparison and as a camera in its own right.

Considering its price, the 60D is an absolute steal. When I first started out with a Canon EOS 20D body it was well above the £1,000 bracket so seeing this body on sale for £799 was a very nice surprise and functionality-wise it is a very similar camera. It caters for people who know what they are doing, and for those new to the world of DSLR photography it has several very useful ( and effective ) settings that do exactly what they should. The pop up flash is always useful too. ISO noise is fantastic and the XXD range has come a long way indeed. The 20D would start showing notable noise at 400 where as this is pretty much noise free all the way up to 1600 which is great as only very dark environments would need this setting.

It fits nicely in the hands too and isnt too heavy but of course this will always be determined by the lens you mount to it. Using the 60D body combined with the Canon EF-S 60mm F2.8 USM Macro lens was as light as a feather making macro photography incredibly easy.

The autofocus is fast enough assuming you're focus point falls into the 9 AF points you're using - my problem is I've been spoiled by the Mark III's speed and considerably more focus points. It really does make this 60D seem very limited when you have to limit yourself to just 9 possible focus points - however if the subjects do fall into these, autofocus is quick and accurate at all apetures. Considering it's 1/4 of the price it's perfectly acceptable. As a walkaround / landscape / portrait camera this will be just fine.

As you can see in the sample images I put along with this review, in some cases this camera will even produce perfectly useable images at ISO 2500 and amazingly ISO 6400 too.

It takes SD cards which I've found to be much cheaper than its compact flash counterparts but the write speeds have been just fine for taking photos, recording video and the transfer of data from the card to the pc dont seem to be much slower than the CF cards. Just one small thing, I use class 10 SD cards since reading forums prior to buying this I saw plenty of angry people who had used class 4 cards and ended up with video footage that was just unusable due to the write speeds being too slow and causing stuttering video playback. For the price, it's just not worth the risk buy cheap low end class SD cards.

I've found a couple of the features to be too time consuming and being gimmicky - the biggest " Hmmmm " moment being the face tracking and multiple face selection option. It takes far too long to drag the white focus box over 4 + peoples faces to tell the camera where they are, and since anyone who knows anything about photography is just going to set their F number high enough to get everyone / everything in focus is seems strange Canon would think it would be a good idea to implement such a time wasting feature. The other thing I didnt rate was the " Auto ISO " feature which is supposed to set the best possible ISO speed for the user but I found it setting the ISO to 6400 to get speeds of 1/4000th second for non moving objects which is ridiculous. The much better solution would have been to keep the shutter speed around the 1/250th mark and select a significantly lower ISO as 6400 will produce very noisy images and there's just no need to make the shutter speed that high for 99.9% of photography ! Hoping they fix this in the future as a reliable Auto ISO feature could be very useful for people working in situations where the light is constantly changing.

It hunts a little in the live view mode so I'd recommend always using manual focus for this setting. Through the viewfinder, focus speed is good - even when using lenses with F1.2 apetures !

The one thing I wish my Mark III had though is this new flip-out screen. And I'm really hoping Canon incorporate this in all their future models as the freedom it gives you when setting up shots really redefines photography. No more on my hands and knees struggling to get my head behind the body and squinting at impossible angles - the flip out screen can be rotated in all directions so you can see, and see clearly the shot you're lining up. I must admit it was strange at first as I've always been used to looking through the viewfinder ! But the LCD screen is clear, sharp and you can zoom in 2x to make sure your shot is perfectly focused which again is so useful - brilliant in fact.

Battery life is good and even with the live view mode on for videomaking I'm still getting a good couple of hours per battery ( and of course signicantly longer when using the viewfinder only ).

The 1.6x crop means it takes EF-S lenses too and the HD video test I did with the Canon 60mm F2.8 USM Macro lens looked fantastic - and so do the photographs !

Image quality overall is fine and the digic IV does a great job with accuarate colours and tones - as a camera alone it holds its own and for the price you really wont find a better camera but let's get to the reason why I bought it. HD VIDEO !

I was initially looking at the 7D and 5D Mark II bodies for video but the 5D Mark II is getting old and the 7D overheats. These were 2 things that for the price made the 60D a more viable option for HD videomaking and once again, the usefulness of the flip-out screen really makes it a no brainer. For the price difference in the different bodies, the quality in the HD video between the 60D, 7D and 5D Mark II is not reflected. The only notable difference is on the 5D Mark II as it's a full frame camera you're going to get much wider shots. As for quality. Yes the 5D Mark II performs better at higher ISO's as expected although I have still found ISO 6400 footage to be perfectly useable and in many cases sharp and clear which is amazing ! Certainly not something my 3 CCD Canon XM2 video camera could do - the limitations of standard format which I think will see the demise of the Mini DV videocamera world. As for the difference in HD video quality between the 60D and 7D they appeared identical. I do like the fact unlike the 5D Mark II, the 7D and 60D's both have dedicated video recording buttons making it far more accessible and less fiddly and time consuming as like photography, in video it's nice to be able to get the camera rolling in case you have the chance to capture something unexpected and wonderful at the push of a single button.

The built in microphone is perfectly functional - and unlike the 7D + 5D Mark II you can now adjust your audio levels so if you're going to be in loud venues, you can somewhat limit the chance of recording nothing but white noise. Again, am hoping to see this function in all future models as it's very useful. You also have the feature of being able to plug in an external microphone directly into the camera which again, is very useful as like the built in flash, the built in microphone is functional but nowhere in the same league as a dedicated speedlight / flash unit.

I love the double zoom feature. This really helps you make sure your focus is 100% spot on before taking your photos / shooting video when tripod mounted. Even when using lower length lenses it really lets you zoom in close to see your focus perfectly ( and when shooting at very low F numbers this really makes things a lot easier ! ).

It's strange being limited to only 12minutes of HD video per take - but it has actually made me a better videomaker. Am thinking a lot more about the shots I need instead of filming far too much footage which helps even more in the editing process. Lots less footage to wade through and lots more short, sharp cuts.

So as a camera and videocamera in its own right, the 60D is great at many things, excellent at others and thankfully horrible at none ! If this is the way forward for the XXD series, things are looking good. VERY good indeed.

As always, try before you buy !!