Canon EOS 60D

Noise Reduction (6.63)

Our first test looks at the amount of noise in images, and how well the camera deals with this. The 60D offers 4 levels of noise reduction, ranging from disabled to strong. As the graph above shows, the noise climbs as the ISO increases, but the noise reduction can reduce it somewhat when on the higher settings. There is a price to pay, though: the images loose some detail that the camera confuses with noise.

If we look at the noise in the different color channels with the NR disabled, we can see there the red noise is a little higher than others, but not significantly. More on how we test noise.

Noise is the stuff that ruins your digital photo, the staticky overlay that makes images look less attractive. It is caused by electronic noise inside the image sensor, and the 60D, like all digital cameras, is prone to picking this up when capturing photos. We found that the 60D was a little noisier then some other cameras, although images shot in low light with plenty of light contained a low level of noise. Things did get a little noisy when we cranked up the ISO to shoot in low light, though.

If we compare the 60D to other cameras with noise reduction off or at the lowest setting, we see that the Canon 60D follows the same basic trend. The Sony SLT-A55 is lower than the other cameras, but that is partly because this camera does not allow you to disable the noise reduction completely: you can only set it to weak.

Comparing the noise reduction at maximum produces a similar pattern: the 60D follows the same trend as other cameras. For examples of the different levels of noise reduction, see the sample photos section.

ISO Options

The normal ISO range of the 60D goes from 100 up to 6400 by default, but this can be expanded up to ISO 12800 by enabling a custom function. We have included samples with this expanded range below, but Canon does not enable it by default for a reason: images get rather noisy above ISO 1600.

ISO Comparisons
Canon EOS 60D	Canon EOS 7D	Nikon D300S	Sony Alpha SLT-A55V	Samsung NX10
ISO Low
ISO 100	ISO 100		ISO 100	ISO 100
ISO 100	ISO 100		ISO 100	ISO 100
Canon EOS 60D	Canon EOS 7D	Nikon D300S	Sony Alpha SLT-A55V	Samsung NX10
ISO 200
Canon EOS 60D	Canon EOS 7D	Nikon D300S	Sony Alpha SLT-A55V	Samsung NX10
ISO 400
Canon EOS 60D	Canon EOS 7D	Nikon D300S	Sony Alpha SLT-A55V	Samsung NX10
ISO 800
Canon EOS 60D	Canon EOS 7D	Nikon D300S	Sony Alpha SLT-A55V	Samsung NX10
ISO 1600
Canon EOS 60D	Canon EOS 7D	Nikon D300S	Sony Alpha SLT-A55V	Samsung NX10
ISO 3200
Canon EOS 60D	Canon EOS 7D	Nikon D300S	Sony Alpha SLT-A55V	Samsung NX10
ISO 6400
Canon EOS 60D	Canon EOS 7D	Nikon D300S	Sony Alpha SLT-A55V	Samsung NX10
ISO 12800
Canon EOS 60D	Canon EOS 7D	Nikon D300S	Sony Alpha SLT-A55V	Samsung NX10

NOTE: The images above are not used in our testing or scoring, but are included here to show real-world examples of the differences between cameras at the various ISO settings.