Canon EOS 60D

Buttons & Dials

There are a lot of buttons, controls and dials on this camera: 21 buttons and 3 dials. These are laid out in a consistent fashion, though, with the most commonly used buttons falling near the fingertips when holding the camera in two hands, so you can easily change the ISO level or drive mode without looking away from the viewfinder. Most of the controls on the back of the camera are designed for use in live view mode or when accessing the menu on the main LCD screen, but the AF-on button is within reach of the thumb. One interesting design touch is the mode dial. To stop this being accidentally turned, Canon has added a button that has to be pressed for the dial to turn, so you can’t accidentally change modes while handling the camera.

Canon also carried over one useful feature from the 50D: an additional scroll wheel on the back of the camera body. In the 60D, this sits around the directional pad, which is a positive move, as it provides for quick scrolling through images and menus, as well as controlling aperture in manual mode and exposure compensation in other modes. It is possible to reach down and turn this with the thumb with the eye to the viewfinder, but it is awkward to turn it more than 45 degrees: you have to turn the dial, move the thumb, turn the dial, etc. This is a bit of a pain when trying to go from a wide to a small aperture.

Despite this, the 60D is overall an extremely easy camera to use and shoot with once you get used to the layout, and 50D users will quickly feel at home here. Canon T2i users should also be able to find their way around after a brief familiarization period.

Most of the controls are on the back of the camera. Of particular note are the live view buttons near the top and the Q and main menu buttons.

More controls are located on the top of the camera, including a group of 5 buttons near the LCD panel and the power switch below the mode dial.

Picture Modes

The 60D offers a number of Picture Modes, which tweak the image in particular ways to achieve the desired look. All of these modes can be tweaked using 4 controls: sharpness, contrast, saturation and color tone.

Picture Effect Samples
Standard Portrait Landscape Neutral Faithful Monochrome More...

In-Camera Editing

Canon has added a few extra editing features over the 7D. As well as rotating images, you can apply a number of creative filters, such as grainy B/W, soft focus, a toy camera effect or a tilt-shift miniature effect. While these might find some use on a point & shoot camera, we doubt they will get much use in this camera for serious photographers, who will want to do any special effects in a more fully featured image editing program.

Menu

The 60D has two types of menu: the quick menu accessed with the Q button and the main menu. The idea is that the quick menu provides quick access to shooting controls such as exposure compensation, drive mode, etc. The main menu contains these and the lesser-used options, such as memory card formatting.

Quick Menu	Main Menu

Instruction Manual

The 60D comes with a full printed manual in both English and Spanish. This manual is well illustrated and indexed, covering all of the advanced features of the camera in some depth. A pocket guide is also included that offers a quick visual guide to the main features of the camera.