Nikon D60 user reviews (with 18mm-55mm lens)

4.0 stars

"The D60 is a great camera" on April 1, 2008 by LaJan7

Pros: Fast, lightweight, intuative, very good quality shots, reasonable price, VR lens STANDARD!

Cons: Small body, lack of bracketing, doesn't support some legacy lenses

Summary: This camera is a great camera as a 2nd for a professional and a perfect camera as a 1st for a prosumer. The price isn't unreasonable like the C/net review alluded to since the better performance (which the reviewer did acknowledge) is worth the extra bucks.

One extremely important note tho: you MUST test your individual camera in the store before purchasing it! I own a D80 that was defective from day one, with a seriously slower curtain assembly making for much fewer shots per second. Unless you KNOW your camera is perfectly manufactured before purchase, you need to have someone else do a 'road test' on it in the store and not be slammed like I was!

The D60's buffer isn't anything like the reviewer's performance and the camera used for the review may have been slightly less well manufactured. I get better than 3.1 frames per second and in good light with ISO at 100, I can run up 100 frames at FINE quality and LARGE size and NEVER use up the buffer! This is completely amazing to me because my D80 with almost identical resolution will max out after about 30 seconds.

Something incredibly useful and completely ignored in the review is the face sensor. This has nothing to do with "face recognition" in some cameras. This is the camera recognizing your face is at the camera and it turns off the display automatically. For people just learning to use a DSLR camera, this is a huge feature for saving time, battery life, and annoyance. Gone is the need to depress the shutter release halfway to darken the display when you still want to see it when not shooting. There's also a very convenient way to KEEP the display off if you're a more experience shooter and don't care to see the thing light up with either a set of handy setting monitors or a review of the last shot.

And speaking of that display... The reviewer didn't mention that there IS a cover for this display included, whereas some Canon's that cost $1000 more don't have one. And the display is also split into two sections: the first for seeing all the main functions and settings of the camera, and; the second for editing the most important ones 'on the fly'. Even the D80 isn't that easy to change and the display, while it may appear childish to some experienced users, is a blessing to inexperienced ones or people who first pick up the camera.

The focusing is as fast as my D80 but it does get confused in some situations, as the reviewer noted and that's a pain. Also, my 70 - 300 Nikkor lens won't autofocus and that really annoyed me since I wasn't aware of this fact before purchasing the camera. Had I known, I may have downgraded to the last D40 to be released. And that's another note missing from the review: Nikon has dumped the D40 line and will go with the D60 instead. So, this isn't just a "step up" for the D40; it's an entirely new lifeform and at 10.1 megapixels, this step up is considerable for the quality of shots.

Yes, the option of JPG settings with the RAW shooting option isn't as good as it could be. That's a big issue for me when reviewing shots on the computer before opening them for editing or deletion. When looking at a sub-standard JPG you really don't know if the RAW is usable or not. And the lack of bracketing for ANYTHING is just a nightmare. When you don't know how to get a shot to work in the field and you HAVE to move on, bracketing can save your bacon, whether it‘s for exposure or anything else. With the D60 you can rotate the command dials and scroll thru the same options as automatic bracketing, but you need to know how to do this, have the camera set to do it, and be fast enough to make it practical. 80,000 shots later, I can't do it on the D80 with the same control options.

On a purely personal note, I can't fathom why anyone would want to do extensive editing inside a camera when even the biggest screens are less than 5 inches across. I don't need HD 72" flat screen display with surround sound to know if the shot is washed out or not but I can't possibly tell if the focus is ‘the best of the burst’. I can't tell if everyone in a shot has their eyes open without scrolling on some ridiculously high zoom setting and jockeying around up and down to even FIND all the eyes in the shot if there are 20 people. LOL! And how can you tell if your creative editing looks like a 4-year old did it or if you got the nuances just right? I guess you can get to that aforementioned TV and hook the camera into it to do the editing without a computer. But in the age of laptops, playing around with a good shot in the less than good setting of a camera's view screen just isn't prudent.

Want a good camera for a beginner? The D60 excels with the large customizable graphic display. Want a second Nikon for very good digital shots as a prosumer? The D60 is your inexpensive best choice. Want a step up from your pocket rocket compact for macro (usually seriously expensive because of the need for expensive glass)? The D60 can slap on a couple of the inexpensive magnifying lenses (think infrared type screw-ons) and you'll be taking macros with a full-sized DSLR and faster than you can even turn on a compact. And know what? The D60 WILL autofocus thru the three I attached but will also display a circle telling you that the subject is in focus when you manually focus too. No, the quality of the shots you'll get from using this admittedly less-than-great way to get a macro isn't stellar and you shouldn't expect that. But for $10 you can get some macro from the same DSLR you're using for all the rest of your shots instead of fishing around for your trusty old snap-shooter.

Oh. The D60 comes with a flash. Some of the Canons that cost $2500 don't. Maybe you don't mind buying speedlights, extra batteries, cables, and other assorted necessities to take a simple flash shot. Gee, if you're spending thousands to buy a camera, throwing money at gear must be second nature - to take a quick and priceless picture of your dog in the house.

As an option, try this one: infrared remote controlled shutter release. The super-expensive but non-professional Canons have wired remotes and ports like your old BetaMax had for watching crummy videos. This camera that costs 1/4 the Canon price can get you snapping shots of yourself or even shooting things in the wild that wouldn't come near you if they saw you but don't know a camera from a rock. And what does a universal remote for your TV/VCR/DVD/DV/cable system sell for these days? How about just for your TV??? The D60's remote sells for $10 and come with a handy Velcro pouch that attaches firmly (thru holes) to your camera strap. As a bonus, it works for the D80 and who know how many other Nikons as well.

Bottom line: if you have a need for high quality digital images but limited cash an want to get the biggest bang for your buck, check out the Nikon D60 side-by-side with the Canon of your choice. If you don't leave with the Nikon, you aren't leaving with your money's worth.

LaJan

PS One of the features one salesman used to try to get me to go Canon before even trying the D80 was the self-cleaning the Canons offer. Not only can you automatically have the D60 clean itself upon every shut down cycle, you can trigger it manually in a pinch. This may sound like hokum to purists and experienced DSLS users but if you're like me and LOATH finding a goobered spot on a great image but can't afford the time to clean out the body every single time you change lenses, this will make your day and sell the camera - hands down.

LJ