Are there any upgrades or "hacks" for the D60?

[neonerd]

I saw in the stickied thread that there was one for the 300D/Rebel, but is there anything I can do to up the performance of my D60?

[neonerd]

anybody?

[ScottE]

I upgraded my D60 with a 20D.

It was worth the money to me.

Scott

[CyberDyneSystems]

There is no firmware hack for the D60.

[neonerd]

I upgraded my D60 with a 20D.

It was worth the money to me.

Scott

I got the camera as a gift, kinda. The flash on it wasn't synchronized with the shutter, and I kept getting Err99's. I sent it back into canon, and paid $185 to fix it.

I'm just getting into all of this, so I don't need any upgrades... For $185 I got a perfectly working D60 with a bunch of lenses :D

For a hobbyist, I think it's fine ;):D

[the.digital.guy]

I'm just getting into all of this, so I don't need any upgrades... For $185 I got a perfectly working D60 with a bunch of lenses :D

For a hobbyist, I think it's fine ;):D


I give you a year before you upgrade!

[Longwatcher]

As mentioned there is no hack for the D60. The reason there is a hack for the 300D is that it was a crippled 10D, so the hack brings back those features that Canon removed from the 10D to make the 300D that are software related, however there are some hardware limitations which the hack can not bring in. In the case of the D60 there is nothing that can really be done to improve the camera from a software point of view that can't also be done in PS.

Just my experience and opinion,

[JAZZ D.P.G.]

I give you a year before you upgrade!

Why?

Unless your willing to upgrade to the 1D MK II, there is not enough difference to justify the costs. Biggest is the 1.3 crop and buffer ability.

If your thinking of the 20D, your further ahead buying good glass and upgrading your PS skills and working with RAW.

As a hobbyist, put the money into glass.

[Hellashot]

I doubt there was anything to "hack" out since the D60 isn't a knock down of a better camera.

[ScottE]

Unless your willing to upgrade to the 1D MK II, there is not enough difference to justify the costs. Biggest is the 1.3 crop and buffer ability.

If your thinking of the 20D, your further ahead buying good glass and upgrading your PS skills and working with RAW.

As a hobbyist, put the money into glass.

Sorry Jazz, I strongly disagree with your post.

There is much less difference between the capabilities of the 1D Mk I and the 20D than there is between the D60 and the 20D. I used the 60D for years and it is very frustrating for the poor autofocus, long delays on start up or wake up, frames per second for action photos, slow buffer clearing time during which the camera is disabled, etc. In all of these the 20D is a far better camera. The 1D Mk 2 is better again on some of them, but not that much better.

Also, the 1D Mk II cannot use EF-S lenses, so it cannot use lenses like the 10-22 EF-S. The widest zoom available is the 16-35/2.8 which won't even get as wide as 20 mm equivalent on a full frame camera. On a 20D the 10-22 gives the equivalent framing of a 16-35 on a full frame. It won't fit the D60 either, since that camera is not EF-S compatible.

If you need telephoto lenses, the 1.6x factor of the 20D is an advantage over the 1.3x factor of the 1D Mk II. A Sigma 50-500 has the equivalent framing of an 80-800 on a 20D (or on a D60). On a 1D Mk II it is only the equivalent of a 65-650.

Using available lenses, the 20D has the 1D Mk II beat on both the wide angle and telephoto ends of the lens range.

Especially when you consider the cost of the camera, the one camera I do not recommend to a hobbyist is the 1D Mk II.

The one thing I do agree with is that it is best to put more money in lenses.

Scott

[CyberDyneSystems]

Yeah.. D60 is nice..

But the 20D is light years ahead of the D60.. and I agree .. the difference in use between 20D and 1D mkII less significant than the differnces in use between the D60 & 20D.

[neonerd]

As a beginner hobbyist, how is the D60 for me?

With the camera, I was given quite a varaety of good lenses. Macro, Telephoto, etc.
Also, just curious...are these lenses only compatible with the D60, or are the interchangable among the EOS Digital cameras?

[Longwatcher]

all EF lenses are compatable with D60, but EF-s lenses won't be.

A D60 is an excellent camera for a camera enthusiest, although a 20D would be better. As someone mentioned the camera start up and buffer write times are really slow compared to 20D, but think of it as a manual wind 35mm film camera and that is about the speed you will go at. I usually recommend the D60 over 300D, but the 350XT is probably an overall better value as an alternative to 20D. On the flip side if you are trying to learn all you can, the D60 will be a better value in that case.

Just my opinion,

[Cordell]

The D60 is a very nice camera to learn from because of some of the limitations. Why is a camera a piece of slow crap as soon as something else/better (10D then 20D) comes out?? :-( The camera was considered great when it first hit the shelves. Now that everyone is spoiled it's not worth much! As a gift for nearly zero dollars you better make love to that camera and learn all you can with it.

I used the D60 and it's limitations help me understand what I can and can't do the proper way instead of the camera doing everything such as composing partly due to the slow focusing, it forced me to learn how to understand manual flash because ETTL on it was not reliable, and the ISO above 400 made me understand lighting. These seem like negative things but they all allowed me to learn. We forget that others before us did not have it so easy. All this will help you appreciate things once you advance and get into better gear.

Oh yeah, no hack. There is really nothing to hack because it will do what you make it do in most situations.

Good luck

[ScottE]

As a beginner hobbyist, how is the D60 for me?

With the camera, I was given quite a varaety of good lenses. Macro, Telephoto, etc.
Also, just curious...are these lenses only compatible with the D60, or are the interchangable among the EOS Digital cameras?

How the D60 is for you depends on what type of photography you are doing. For many types of photography it will be just as good as the more recent models. The limitations are mainly noticeable if you do action photography and need faster auto focus and the ability to shoot more frames per second. The other disadvantage comes if you need to turn your camera on and take a picture in a hurry. The D60 takes a little longer to warm up, so the shot can be gone before the camera is ready.

Other than that, the D60 will take great pictures. I even took a ski race picture that was used as the centre fold in a magazine with my D60. You can learn to work around the camera's limitations.

As for the lenses, keep them. They can be used on any Canon EOS film or digital camera. You are lucky to have a selection of lenses to learn on. Just don't spend so much time flipping lenses that you don't take the time to master each one.

Scott

[dpastern]

mmm Interesting thread, considering I've just purchased a 2nd hand D60. To my joy, I discovered CF 15, so I can use the camera and test it without a compactflash card in it!

After playing with it, I'll note a few things:

1. Super quiet shutter (I'm using to the eos1n shutter, which is considerably noisier). Makes me wonder why people are complaining about how noisy the 20D shutter is!

2. Poor autofocus in dim light? From my limited experience, I'd disagree. It focussed quickly, and accurately for me in dim lighting. Of course, I was using the AF assist beam (using a CF so that it emits but doesn't fire). I guess, a lot of it depends on how you define 'dim light'. I suspect many are looking at dim light being pitch black! And dim light is most certainly NOT pitch black. Testing so far, between my eos1n and D60 doesn't show much of a difference in speed/accuracy of autofocusing in general use, both indoors and outdoors. Sure, if you're shooting theatre/band shots, you might have some issues. Basically, after using my D60 for an hour in what I consider dim light, I can't see what the fuss was all about, and why the D60 has been bagged for this!

3. Buffer speed. Tell me now, and this is what really ires me, how many 35mm film SLRs had a motor drive (as default)? Not that many. Sure, the last few years of 35mm film SLR development showed cameras have a 2fps motor drive, and yes, you could hold the shutter button down and zoom thru a film, but let's consider a few things.

a. What's quicker - waiting for the D60 buffer to clear, or changing a film cartridge? I know which is quicker.

b. How often do you really really really need to be just holding the shutter button down and take shots in quick succession? Most photographers don't need this function/feature, so it's a very moot point continually bashing the D60 because the buffer is smaller than the 20D's. Sure, if you absolutely need that buffer speed because you're a sports photographer etc, yes, the 20D is better. But, for most people, the D60 is fine I reckon.

The startup times can be a bit of a nuisance, but I've set my camera to 8 mins for power off. Sure, it might drain the battery faster, that's why you have the Canon dual charger and two or more batteries :)

It seems that there's a lot of "there's a newer model out there, we MUST upgrade to keep up with the joneses" attitude out there. The D60 is a fine camera, most of the 'upgrades' for the 10D or 20D are minimal in my eyes. For most users, it'll be fine. Sure, the 10D and 20D are better. There's no argument there from me. I just don't think that bagging the poor old D60 to death is warranted.

As someone else pointed out, everyone raved about the D60 when it came out! Suddenly, because there's a new kid on the block, it's suddenly crap? What gives? Either you really didn't use the D60 when it was current range model, or you're suffering from the must upgrade syndrome.

Depending on what you're shooting, maybe consider selling the D60 to somewhere like keh.com, and upgrading to a 10D (the price differential won't be that much, most certainly less than upgrading to the 20D). I would definitely buy more quality glass for it though :-)

Dave

[Streetshooter]

funny thing about my D60...I just got a 5D...sold 2 20D's...but still have the D60.....will never ever sell that camera........

[Zepher]

I took some band pictures with the 350D and my D60 and it seems like the D60 took better pictures, when viewing on the LCD. I'll know how they look in a bit as soon as I transfer the images. and I bought the D60 due to the cost, couldn't afford a 10D or 20D and didn't want a DRebel.

[TomPierce]

I got the camera as a gift, kinda. The flash on it wasn't synchronized with the shutter, and I kept getting Err99's. I sent it back into canon, and paid $185 to fix it.

Two points to note:

First, used D60 bodies are now going for around $450 USD - if you got one for $185 "plus a variety of lenses" then you got one heck of a deal !

Second. as you've already heard, most people are keeping their D60s even after upgrading to 20D or better cameras.

While the D60 does have its limitations, it is a perfectly servicable camera. And looking back, I paid more than 10 times what you paid when I bought mine.

And that was just for the body... :)

Tom (I'll give you $200 for it :) ) Pierce

[photoshooter]

i own 2 d60 and who ever thinks its not good for sports i say go to my web site i have 1000s of pics you can view www.superchargedphotos.com

[ScottE]

I have a D60 and a 20D. I wouldn't say the D60 is no good for sports, but I will say the 20D is much better. With the D60 I missed many shots because the camera had gone into sleep mode and took so long to wake up. With the D60 I had to shoot JPEG, but with the 20D I shoot RAW if I don't need more that 6 pictures in quick succession. I had good success shooting JPEG with the D60, but there were a few pictures that could have been made better if I could have processed from RAW. For fast action, the 20D can fire more frames per second. The D60 has 3 AF sensors in a row. If I am shooting a cyclist or skier I want to focus on the face that is above the horizontal centre line and either right or left of centre. The 20D has sensors in those positions.

If you couldn't get good sports pictures with a D60 you wouldn't be able to get them with a 20D either. The advantage of the 20D is that you will get a higher number of keepers.

[Mark_Cohran]

The D60 is a fine camera. It has most of the control features of the 10D and 20D and will give you a quality capture. It's not the latest generation of Canon DSLR's by any means, but it is by no means obsolete as a tool either. It's a great starter camera and will serve you well as you become familiar with the idiosyncrasies of digital photography. It's a great studio camera and works well for landscapes and nature as well. It is indeed usable for sports, but not as capable as other cameras in the Canon line-up for this field of photography.

I found the low-light AF capability to be adequate, but the 10D is better and the 20D is far better. That's not a slam on the D60, but just indicative of the improvements Canon made in the later generation DSLR's.

Will you eventually want to upgrade? I believe so, but try to learn the camera controls and features well and upgrade when you feel that the camera is restricting you from achieving your photographic goals.

Mark

[dpastern]

Yes, I will eventually upgrade. Either to the 10D when I get laid off in just over a month and a bits time (due to the improved AF and subtle enhancement/improvement of features, plus the support of 2gb + memory cards). After reading some posts, I'm toying with the 20D but it'll be a real stretch to afford it. I'm gonna do a separate post shortly with my first impressions of the D60 in general usage (I only found out this morning that I can still use the camera even without a CF card - since I'm very strapped for cash, I haven't yet gotten a memory card).

Dave