Canon EOS D60

[Kevin H]

Here is my issue with the D60. I am a professional photographer and have been for 15 years. I shoot major campaigns, etc., etc. I am not tooting my horn but to let you know, I do know about cameras. I, as some of you, was holding out as long as I thought I could to make an addition of digital equipment part of my 'bag.' I bought a D30 almost two years ago and it performed flawlessly in every respect. I bought a D60 in March '02 and discovered a world of problems dealing with focal lengths. This camera works superbly, only if you stay within certain perameters. I have done tests with many lenses, Canon and Sigma. I could go on all day about the technical aspects of what I have discovered but I don't want to bore you. It is however very important to keep this in mind. (I have done these tests with three different D60 bodies) DO NOT USE WIDE ANGLE LENSES. The image quality is so poor I am shocked that Canon let this out on the market. Any lens under 50mm is terrible. Try shooting wide open and compare your image to the same shot closed down substantially. If you want the best results with your D60 (the results will be fantastic) use the 50 1.4/50 1.0 or larger telephoto. Do not shoot the 50 1.4 smaller than f2.2. If you stick with this info, your shots will be perfect. The D60 IS a good camera but the chip has too many pixels for it's size, or something.

If anyone has any suggestions about how to tweek the camera so it will work with wide angle and wide open without the edges drastically distoring, please let me know.

Also - Do not buy lenses for the D60 by other manufacturers that are wider 50mm. You will not like the results.

[mrbobco]

my only question is...

on what do you base this? some examples would help make a much more cogent argument...otherwise...it's just opinion (and since it appears a lot of people base their purchases on opinions they see here...it's a pretty strong one :)

i know, i know...it's all subjective...but i'm curious as to why you feel this way...this seems to be a new opinion (it's nice to hear one INSTEAD of whining about the raw/continuous thumbnail bug that has been beaten to death ;)

bob

[Kevin H]

Bob, I am not whining and I don't take offense. I love the digital cameras and I will be buying a 1Ds, however the D60 does have some problems. Here's what to do. Take your D60 outside with a 35mm or wider. Shoot a f2.0 and f5.6. You will then have your answer as to what I am talking about. The center is the only thing in focus - everything else 'moves' and does not look good to clients at all.

[Kevin H]

Also, one of my cameras went to Canon 4 times and they couldn't fix the problem.

[ian h]

hiya....

i just got a d60 with a sigma 17-35f2.8/4 ....so far im a bit disappointed with the clarity of the image...i agree with others that images look a bit underexposed but thats prob better cos theres more levels+stuff to play with.... it seems to be focused but overall soft ..when i apply USM@150 in phoshp the image is ok.... this amount of sharpening seems excessive to me, but somehow because of the lack of noise in the image it can take it.... ive been using a G2 for a while and i only could sharpen aprox 80 before it was noticeable....

what other "processing techniques" do ya all reccomend???

still testin.....laters..ian

[Mark_Cohran]

How odd! I been using my D60 with my Canon 28-70 f2.8L for several months now. This combination is my workhorse, and I've shot well over 6000 photos with this since July. In addition, I've paired the D60 with the Canon 24-85 zoom. I haven't noticed the problem you've mentioned with either combination of camera and lens and I often shoot wide open. I'll take a more critical look at some of my files, but if the problem is truly bad enough to warrant avoiding lenses with a focal length less than 50mm, I sure I would have noticed by now.

[phoby3]

I'm real puzzled by these post about sharpness and focusing issues with the d60. I live by my 17-35 2.8, I almost always shoot wide open because my camera stays on aperture prefered. I just posted a reply regarding sharpening at levels of 150 to 200 which I find quite normal regardless of the digital capture device(although no one ever mentions at what radius the use).

I have never been overly pleased with the wide angle zooms of Nikon or Canon due to vingeting (sic) or softness in the edges, especially when compared with Contax or Leica but you have to give to get.

I also have been shooting for an excess of 15 years. But, I am thrilled with my d60. I bought two EOS3's when I got the D60 and one of the the 3's has yet to come out of the box. No complaints here except for one strange night of yet to be explained double exposures.

Peace

[jpbeale]

This form seems to exist, in some part at least, for people to "go on all day" about technical details, so don't be shy... I use a D30 and have been thinking of upgrading so I'm quite interested in learning about it. If you could post some 1:1 pixel crops from your wide lenses used open and stopped down I'm sure that others here could offer some relevant opinions/suggestions.

[mrbobco]

glad you understood me kevin...i wasn't meaning to rag you out...i'm always interested in seeing things for myself (like everyone else here, i'm sure)

as crazy as it sounds...i did "trade up" (nee sell) my d-30 for a d-60...point is...i've been too busy to experiment with the d-60 more than to see the odd under-exposure problem (something i actually noticed about my D-30 when i first bought it, too)

anyhow...not straying too badly...i'm sure we'd all love to see some examples of what you mean...

like mchoran, i use the 28-70L most of the time with little cause for concern with sharpness (it's never been a problem) BUT (and a big but) i don't have to use it to make a living...it's always fascinating where that line gets blurred between us serious amateurs and professionals...

bob

[jmamer]

I notice the same thing on my 28-135 Canon lens. Moving from F3.5 to F8 made a huge improvement in
center sharpness (got this suggestion from this forum by the way). Then I looked carefuly ad photodo's MTF graphs for the lens. Checkout the graphs for 28mm at 3.5 and 8.0. I think it's clear why I got an increase in sharpness.

I can't imagine why, but the D60 seems very sensitive to glass. Maybe it's simply that with all those pixels,
I'm looking at much larger images than before. My lenses that are at 4.0 or above on photodo's quality scale are generally no problem. Those at 3.5 and above are o.k. and below 3.5 well.....
I notice that many of Canon's wide-angle zooms come out in the 3.0-4.0 range on Photodo.

Ah, but when all the variables break in your favor, enough light to stop it down a bit and wick up the shutter speed......wow!

[dbarthel]

I regularly shoot with the 16-35mm L zoom as well as the 28-135IS zoom. Like almost all lenses, best results at F8 corner to corner. At 100% the 16-35 at 16mm is razor sharp across the whole image at f5.6 or higher.

[kirk]

I have a Canon Elan and recently purchased a D60. Shot about 800 pics in two months with the D60 (nice to be able to do that without paying processing/printing fees to see exactly how they turned out!).

I love the D60, BUT to compare the D60 prints with the Elan (same lens, etc) makes me wonder why I want to use a digital camera. USM in Photoshop fixes 95% of the problem. This creates an extra step before processing, but makes the prints look "very close" to that of the Elan. Strange though, if this is what it takes, why can it not be built into the camera??

CANON: Please incorporate the USM filter into the D60 camera with a menu option to adjust settings. Thanks for taking care of this at your earliest convenience...


I would like to post examples of what I am saying, but it just wouldn't be the same to scan a print from a film camera and compare it to a digial print... kinda like looking at "before and after" or "camera a vs. camera b" comparisons in magazines (due to the printing process, they almost always look the same).

[phoby3]

kirk wrote:

I love the D60, BUT to compare the D60 prints with the Elan (same lens, etc) makes me wonder why I want to use a digital camera. USM in Photoshop fixes 95% of the problem. This creates an extra step before processing, but makes the prints look "very close" to that of the Elan. Strange though, if this is what it takes, why can it not be built into the camera??

CANON: Please incorporate the USM filter into the D60 camera with a menu option to adjust settings. Thanks for taking care of this at your earliest convenience...




The D60 is a pro/advanced-am camera. Because digitial capture is so different than flim, digital images require sharpening. But as I said above the D60 is a pro/am camera, would you prefer Canon determining appropriate sharpening or you? Canon (according to the reps I've talked to) felt that the decision regarding the need for sharpening should lie with the photographer. That is why the D60 needs more sharpening that the G2. It is assumed that you will be doing more post shooting work on the photographs.

[kirk]

Yep, I had a friend that fell on a sidewalk recently. After standing up and brushing off, he said "I meant to do that!". I guess Canon intentionally made the D60 "blurier" than the Canon S40 point and shoot?? No offense, but the sharpness of the S40 is VERY sharp compared to any shot with the D60. Why is this?

Don't humor me with technical excuses on something I paid $2200+. I understand that digital capture is much different than film, but this is not true with the S40. Yes, I have used both. I used an S40 quite a bit before purchasing the D60. The D60 was chosen for greater versatility. I did not expect to have to "post process" every single photo from the D60. This isn't necessary on the S40. So when is 6.25 MP less than 4.1 MP?

It's really frustrating to continue to hear excuses as to why the D60 needs post processing to correct "fuzzy" pictures.

NO IT WASN'T assumed that I would be doing more post shooting work on the photos. I actually expected to do LESS than the S40, NOT MORE. The Canon rep(s) that told you they would let you determine the appropriate sharpening are clowns. If the picture was sharp to begin with (like the S40), it wouldn't need any sharpening!

[tytso]

kirk wrote:
It's really frustrating to continue to hear excuses as to why the D60 needs post processing to correct "fuzzy" pictures.

NO IT WASN'T assumed that I would be doing more post shooting work on the photos. I actually expected to do LESS than the S40, NOT MORE. The Canon rep(s) that told you they would let you determine the appropriate sharpening are clowns. If the picture was sharp to begin with (like the S40), it wouldn't need any sharpening!


The problem with over-sharpening is that you can lose data (image quality). How much sharpening is necessary is a non-trivial question, and if you do too much sharpening in the camera, you can't undo it. Hence Canon's decision to risk erring on the side of under-sharpening rather than over-sharpening.

Personally, on both my S40 (which is my "instamatic" digital camera) and on my D-60, I shoot in raw mode, which means **no** sharpening is done. What I get is the raw pixels, as recorded by the CCD. I then do all of the post-processing, including sharpening, on a computer, where I can control the amount of sharpening to my liking. (Actually, most times USM --- unsharp mask works even better than a generic sharpening algorithm.)

Now, I suppose you could argue that for picky folks, they could use Raw mode, and for people who want to be lazy and want an "instamatic" no-muss-no-fuss JPG, Canon should have had a custom function mode which turns up the sharpening. But clearly, Canon assumed that if you're willing to pay $2,000 for a camera, you're, probably the picky sort who is willing to go to some extra effort to get the best possible photos.

[Harlod]

kirk wrote:

It's really frustrating to continue to hear excuses as to why the D60 needs post processing to correct "fuzzy" pictures.



I rarely need to use sharpening on properly exposed photos taken with good sharp lenses (Canon 50mm f1.4/Canon 28-70 f2.8L/Sigma 20 f1.8). I routinely see people post that D60 images always need sharpening, but I often wonder if people are oversharpening their photos or using post processing to attempt to cover for soft lenses, camera shake, or subject movement. I see far more oversharpened images taken with digital cameras in public galleries than I see on processed film scans.

[kirk]

Harold,

I agree completely. The decision to purchase the D60 was partially based on the fact that the Elan lenses and flash could also be used on the D60. I quickly found that the Sigma lens I have (that produces extremely sharp pictures on the Elan) is so blurry on the D60 that it is useless. The temporary fix was to buy a cheap Canon lens. What puzzles me is that the Sigma lens does so well on the Elan, why not on the D60? Someone else on this forum noted that Sigma had to "adjust" their lens to make it work with the D60. I'm afraid to have this done because I don't know what it will do to the sharpness ability of the Elan... I now know that to get decent pictures from the D60 requires very high end lenses or post processing. THIS IS SOMETHING EVERYONE SHOULD THINK ABOUT BEFORE "upgrading" TO THE D60!

Second disappointment was that my Quantaray flash does not work on the D60. Oh well, so much for backward compatibility.

[ian h]

ok.....so its established d60 images are soft...how much sharpening do you usually apply, depending on the subject? has anyone noticed any colour cast which needs to be corrected?

[mrchips]

ian h wrote:
ok.....so its established d60 images are soft...how much sharpening do you usually apply, depending on the subject? has anyone noticed any colour cast which needs to be corrected?




Maybe on this site it is necessary to sharpen, but I have found little use for sharpenning. With the right lens "L" glass and the right hold I have never had a problem.

http://www1.photosig.com/viewphoto.php?id=348690 This is a D30 macro that I did before I got my D60. The D60 in my book is a little sharper.
Denny

No Sharpenning at all