I’m waiting for the new models, please prove me wrong.

[sanford]

I’ve got to days left to return my camera to B&H, I think its going back! Why, the raw image says it all. Capture dark; chip not right, simple. My studio friend and I tested his old Nikon D1 to my d60. His raw file looked great, no 3rd party filters / files to run. My file was dark (yes we all know that.) so any adjustment = noise. When we looked for the noise in the files, WOW Nikons file was so much cleaner (much less noise) than the d60’s.
I’d love to keep this camera and not have to wait for the new ones so please prove my simple logic wrong.

Thanks
Sanford

[photography By Evangelos]

Send it back. There are new models in the works and we should see them in march at PMA. Wait the new models shold be much better. By the way the D60 is in the D100 class and not the D1X or D1H class of camera. I have had no proplens with this camera in a studio with the correct lighting and shooting RAW mode. Make sure you are setting white balance correctly. Do not put it in the Auto setting it will not work well at all. Also I use the camera in manual the metter is not all that good. Good luck and have a great day.

[Roger_Cavanagh]

Sanford,

You need to post an image for us to evaluate. Many D60 owners have posted great images, so it could be the camera's faulty, you're not doing something right or you have very high standards.

Whatever Canon may announce at the PMA, I doubt you be able to buy one for a while. The 1Ds was announced in September and took around 3 months to hit the streets. I would guess there will be a big demand, so you'll either have to wait or pay a premium.

Regards,

[Yavor75]

Sanford-
You probably have returned your D60 by now, but it is also probably a mistake. If you read this board, you will have distain for the D60 before you pull it out of the box.
That is because of us nit-picking it to death.
It is not perfect, but it can produce amazingly good pictures- and compared to cameras in it's class (Nikon D100), it is the winner. This camera will not shoot RAW images and deliver them gamma-corrected and profile converted. Conversely, when you use the supplied software to convert the files -then use any of the third-party software to then process them, you land up with tremendous pictures.
When I find myself confounded trying to eek out the last bit of possible definition from a 300% zoomed in crop of human hairs on a D60 image, all I have to do is take a look at output from my Olympus E-10 (which I thought made great pictures -last month) and I know my whole bar has been raised tremendously by this camera. This is true even when I look at film prints.

So, go ahead- wait for the next generation...but be prepared to suffer! Be prepared to pay top dollar and have to wait...and get a camera with yet other strange habits. These are all in their infancy, and until the year 2007 or so- we can all call ourselves pioneers.

Take care-
Bob

[photography By Evangelos]

I am not sure why most people are having a hard time getting the D60. I placed my order when the camera first was announced and got my two D60's with no problems. Like I said wait there are much better cameras on the way. If you cant wait then get the S2 fuji. I am in my third week with this camera and can say
the fuji has really surprized me. I have one more week to try it out the store I got if from has a 30 Day return policy but I think I am gona keep this one and get rid of one of my D60's. I now can finally can use A/F in low light with the fuji. I was never able to do this with the D30,and D60 so I am very happy. The only problem is the 2 types of batteries other than that it is a great camera. I am recommending this camera because I see that you are currently compairing it to a Nikon. So good luck and have a great day.

[photography By Evangelos]

Yavor75 wrote:
Sanford-
You probably have returned your D60 by now, but it is also probably a mistake. If you read this board, you will have distain for the D60 before you pull it out of the box.
That is because of us nit-picking it to death.
It is not perfect, but it can produce amazingly good pictures- and compared to cameras in it's class (Nikon D100), it is the winner. This camera will not shoot RAW images and deliver them gamma-corrected and profile converted. Conversely, when you use the supplied software to convert the files -then use any of the third-party software to then process them, you land up with tremendous pictures.
When I find myself confounded trying to eek out the last bit of possible definition from a 300% zoomed in crop of human hairs on a D60 image, all I have to do is take a look at output from my Olympus E-10 (which I thought made great pictures -last month) and I know my whole bar has been raised tremendously by this camera. This is true even when I look at film prints.

So, go ahead- wait for the next generation...but be prepared to suffer! Be prepared to pay top dollar and have to wait...and get a camera with yet other strange habits. These are all in their infancy, and until the year 2007 or so- we can all call ourselves pioneers.

Take care-
Bob
2007-infancy?? The technology is available today and the prices have fallen very very fast. D30 price was around $3,000 and the D60's Price is $2,199 and some new digital SLR's are in the $1,700 range like the Sigma. You will not Suffer in price or with the wait time just be smart.

[sanford]

Thanks for all of the great information, the clock is ticking and I’m now packing up the camera BUT, I really would like a camera now. I can use my studio partners older D1 with its 7.5 mg file but I already have two jobs lined up that I could use the d60, and pay for it.
The problem is still the noise in the file. The raw image tells all! The raw image on the d60 is so dark and it just bothers me to rely so heavily on software to clean it up, not to mention the noise it produces (easily witnessed by looking in the channels – especially in the red.) I am high end user meaning, this is what I have made my living on for the last 8 years. I would need the d60 to produce beautiful, consistent, output up to 11x14 CYMK to keep the camera. I just posted a question relating to CYNK so I’ll wait and see. Funny only a few post relating to CYKM in the archives.
Thanks
Sanford

[chris maddock]

No offence intended, but you aren't convering your RAWs to Linear Tiffs and then not post-processing them correctly, are you? Linear TIFFs are very dark.

If you're doing RAW-Linear TIFF conversions, have you tried Pekka's LS_D60 actions?
Alternatively, have you tried doing non-linear conversions as an alternative?

KRs
Chris

[sanford]

chris maddock wrote:
No offence intended, but you aren't convering your RAWs to Linear Tiffs and then not post-processing them correctly, are you? Linear TIFFs are very dark.

If you're doing RAW-Linear TIFF conversions, have you tried Pekka's LS_D60 actions?
Alternatively, have you tried doing non-linear conversions as an alternative?

KRs
Chris

Thanks, no offence taking. Yes, I have done what you have mentioned. But, I hope that I’m wrong, the linear tiff is exactly what the camera produces, no (or minimal) image processing. The ccd produces a very dark original image (witnessed from the linal tiff), this is the real image. It then takes software to inhance it. We should rely on the hardware not the software – thought the software you mentioned is a great fix, a fix though.
I’m going to stop betting up on this camera, its really a nice camera for the price, time and place and I like the 1.6 lens conversation.
Sanford.

[Yavor75]

Sanford-
It is not a matter of fixing the image coming from the camera. The camera does not produce a linear Tiff...RAW is the RAW information from the camera's sensor- which is not a CCD , but a custom CMOS sensor from Canon. There is no Tiff out-of-the-camera option. This RAW option produces a .CRW file which can be converted by external software- instead of using the internal camera's processor.
You can choose to convert it to a JPG, Tiff or Linear Tiff.
I use this option for shooting only the most critical shots.
The CMOS sensor is quite quiet actually. You have to pay 3-4x more money to beat it.
As well, if you shoot JPG files with in-camera processing, all that is required is a little Unsharpen-mask in Photoshop in order to produce 11"x14" prints which several people on this forum routinely are producing from their wedding shoots.
If you can spend $7000+ for a camera body- you can excell the D60. Your business may warrent this. If you buy another camera in the D60's class, the differences are minimal- and the D60 is in the middle of the resolution
game. You will not be able to buy a digital camera that requires NO post-processing to create a great large print.

I'll shut up now! Best of luck!

Bob

[soumya63]

sanford wrote:
chris maddock wrote:
No offence intended, but you aren't convering your RAWs to Linear Tiffs and then not post-processing them correctly, are you? Linear TIFFs are very dark.

KRs
Chris

Thanks, no offence taking. Yes, I have done what you have mentioned. The ccd produces a very dark original image (witnessed from the linal tiff), this is the real image. It then takes software to inhance it. We should rely on the hardware not the software – thought the software you mentioned is a great fix, a fix though.
Sanford.


Oh Boy! We should have told you before this is how D60 or other Canon Digital SLRs work. You can not use the RAW file straight out from the camera. You need to convert it to a Graphics Program readable format by using Canon's RAW format conversion API. If you do not want to take the hassle of converting from RAW to Linear Tiff and then to 16 bit Tiff, you can do so in a single step. It is not the fault of the Camera, nor the CMOS sensor. Even the flagship product EOS 1Ds works in the same way.

You may ask why you need to do so many things? Apart from other technical issues, the biggest reason is to allow Photographer the complete flexibility in post processing, including twicking the White Balance setting.

In Digital Camera, such post processing is your Darkroom. It is as important as composing the photograph and pressing the shutter release. This is what many photographers refer to as the learning curve of Digital Photography. I have a feeling, you have returned a perfectly good camera for no fault!

Soumya
www.mitraphoto.com

[jswayze]

Instead of re-hashing existing info, let me provide a link that covers the topic pretty well, IMO:

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=001k3t


I still want to add my $.02, however, because the original poster is clearly misled on why the linear TIFF looks the way it does.

Just because the linear TIFF looks dark, it doesn't mean its noisy and that you throw away good data when you change the levels in Photoshop. You're filling a 16-bit file format with 12 bits of data. When you change the levels you are stretching those 12 original, good, clean bits of data to 16 bits. Not a loss, just a "stretch."

[sanford]

Wow, if you guys are around SF and my studio on 9th St., please stop by, I’ll buy you a beer. Thanks for all the great info, REALLY!
I’m keeping the camera. I’ll buy a "D80" when it comes out and take a $300 - $1,000 loss and sell my d60 camera on ebay. Until then I can shoot and learn until my hart’s content. Plus no more bills from the lab, Polaroid or film.

All the best,
Sanford

[digiBoy]

the problem Sanford is explaining here is yes, very picky, but a very good point as well. Let me just explain my take, for the logic of the whole thing, which makes very clear sense.

If you have a chip that is capturing a RAW image 3 or more stops underexposed, then having to use software to adjust for it, then the hardware is the limitation, not the software. And since it is the hardware which you purchase for the quality of the image, and not the software, you would be better off choosing hardware that does not require a software fix. Otherwise, you are going about the thing totally backwards. Its like trying to make chicken salad from chicken poop - its just not ideal in any way.

Now sure, the price is great, but now we know why. We can see that what Canon is doing, is pushing the sensitivity of the cheaper chip to the point where it has to capture dark, just to get a larger file size. It is great for the average user who will never notice, and bad for the rare professional user who knows better. If this is the way all their chips are, then I would shop around for alternatives. (I have been shooting digital for clients since 1994, so I know a little about this subject, having used just about every pro system to date, every week.)

Since Sanford's clients expect the best (they are Fortune 500 companies), why use less than the best? Picky, ya, his clients and level of work demand it. He can do better, even if it means more money. In his category of clients, he really should not be trying to cut corners with cheaper hardware anyway.

thanks...

[jswayze]

digiBoy wrote:

If you have a chip that is capturing a RAW image 3 or more stops underexposed, then having to use software to adjust for it, then the hardware is the limitation, not the software.

...

Now sure, the price is great, but now we know why. We can see that what Canon is doing, is pushing the sensitivity of the cheaper chip to the point where it has to capture dark, just to get a larger file size.

Hmmmm...

For those who were not clear on my previous post, let me try again.

The CMOS chip in the D60 records the light it sees on each of it's 6 or so million pixels. It doesn't capture them dark, or light, it just captures what it sees, and uses 12 bits per color channel to describe each pixel. The exposure system of the camera determines how much light reaches the sensor.

The "RAW image" is not really even an image. It's just the raw data from the sensor. It becomes an image when the pixel color values are converted to a TIFF, JPG, etc. format. Most of these formats are 8-bit, but some (like TIFF) are 16-bit images, meaning two 8-bit bytes are allocated to describe each color channel of each pixel.

To preserve the maximum amount of information from the RAW data, you can convert it to a 16-bit format, but you'e got some space left over (4 bits). Typically, this format is TIFF, and it's called a "linear" TIFF because you do a linear mapping of the 12 bits of the RAW data to the first 12 bits of the 16-bit TIFF file. The remaining 4 bits are zeros. Now, if you were to look at this "linear TIFF" file in a viewer, it looks dark because you're seeing all 16 bits of color, and a quarter of those bits are zeroes - they're black! If you go into Photoshop and use the Levels command to even out the image, you're essentially doing what would be done if you converted to a "non-linear" TIFF. You're applying a gamma curve (of sorts) to the image and mapping the 12 bits over to 16.

So, there you have it. I think.

The chip doesn't capture 3-stops underexposed relative to the exposure setting, and Canon isn't trying to get a larger file size by using a less-sensitive chip to capture extraneous "dark" data.

[soumya63]

digiBoy wrote:
If you have a chip that is capturing a RAW image 3 or more stops underexposed, then having to use software to adjust for it,

Let me add few more lines to explain the seemingly dark underexposed phenomenon we see in a linear file. This is not due to Canons clever marketing to push substandard light insensitive cmos chips in D60, but due to a property of our monitor phosphor screen! It is called gamma. In simple non-technical term, crt phosphors does not provide brightness proportionally to the electron gun acceleration voltage. It emits light proportional to the voltage raised to the power of a number called gamma.

What D60 captures in cmos sensor is exact 1:1 representation of light intensity information. This information is linear as it is 1:1, but our monitor screen is incapable of showing picture information properly from a liner gamma file. All appears too dark.

All PC monitors have gamma ranging from 2.1 to 2.5. All Mac monitors have gamma 1.8. So if you see a linear file in Mac monitor, you will see it much brighter than on a PC monitor.

This is what all these linear to non-linear converter software do. They apply a custom gamma curve to this linear file so that it becomes viewable on PC monitor. In-fact, you can tweak a Liner file manually in Photoshop by using curve command and RGB channel and get a nice non-linear Tiff file without using any such converters! And if you capture it and save it in a file, you will have you own Linear to Non-linear converter action!

Lastly, there is nothing wrong with D60, CMOS sensor or the dark linear tiff file. Digital is a new technology and believe me there is so many things to learn and so easy to misunderstood a feature as a bug.

:)

Soumya
www.mitraphoto.com

[Thomas]

soumya63 wrote:
Let me add few more lines to explain the seemingly dark underexposed phenomenon we see in a linear file. This is not due to Canons clever marketing to push substandard light insensitive cmos chips in D60, but due to a property of our monitor phosphor screen! It is called gamma.

This is a correct explanation. The "gamma" number represents the value of the exponent in the function used in converting input into output. Gamma value of 1.0, (linear), means no change in the colour conversion function, but it is not sutable for vewing on a computer monitor. Gamma 1.8 (typical for Mac monitors), or gamma 2.2 (for IBM compatible monitors) creates a nonlinear image which you can see as "normal" on your monitor. Complaints about linear files showing as too dark can be compared to complaints about a film negative being incorrectly exposed because the red items look green when you look at them before making a print. For more info on gamma and other digital photography related stuff visit this Timo Autiokari's web site:
http://www.aim-dtp.net/aim/calibration/index.htm

Regarding another posting:
To preserve the maximum amount of information from the RAW data, you can convert it to a 16-bit format, but you'e got some space left over (4 bits). Typically, this format is TIFF, and it's called a "linear" TIFF because you do a linear mapping of the 12 bits of the RAW data to the first 12 bits of the 16-bit TIFF file. The remaining 4 bits are zeros. Now, if you were to look at this "linear TIFF" file in a viewer, it looks dark because you're seeing all 16 bits of color, and a quarter of those bits are zeroes - they're black! If you go into Photoshop and use the Levels command to even out the image, you're essentially doing what would be done if you converted to a "non-linear" TIFF. You're applying a gamma curve (of sorts) to the image and mapping the 12 bits over to 16.

I doubt the validity of the this explanation that extra zeros added when colors are encoded in 16 bits per pixel cause the dark appearance. The zero bits are added at the beginning of a number representing a color and they do not change the existing value. It works as instead of a value 60 you wrote 000060, the second number looks odd but represents a 60. That is all. Changing the number of bits holding color information from 16 to 8 does not make the image darker or brighter - try it out.

Regards,

Thomas