Canon EOS 60D

Sharpness

We found that the 60D was capable of capturing very sharp images, but that this was let down somewhat by the performance of the 18-135mm zoom lens that Canon bundled it with. We can tell this because the sharpness in the center of the frame of our test photos was very high, but the sharpness at the edges was much lower. Basically, the 60D is a camera that can capture very sharp, clean images, but the included lens lets it down. If image quality is critical to you, buy the 60D without a lens and spend the money you save on buying some better lenses. More on how we test sharpness.

Image Sharpness and Chromatic Aberration

Focal Length:

24.0mm

62.0mm

135.0mm

Click blue squares to change sample crops below
f/4 f/11 f/25
f/5.6 f/16 f/32
f/5.6 f/18 f/36

Image Stabilization (7.39)

The 60D uses Canon’s lens based image stabilization (IS) system, where an element of the lens moves in response to the camera shake detected by the camera body. We have generally found Canons to have effective image stabilization, and the 60D is no exception: we found that it did a good job of correcting for camera shake in our tests, especially at the longer shutter speeds. It is not perfect, though: we found that it sometimes made things a little worse at shutter speeds above 1/60 of a second. Our recommendation would be to leave it turned on if you are shooting indoors or in relatively low light. One thing to bear in mind here: because the IS system is built into the lens, the performance will be different with different lenses than the one we tested with (the 18-135mm kit lens).

In the low shake portion of our test (which simulates hand shake while trying to hold the camera steady), you can see that the IS didn’t make much difference at the higher shutter speeds, but it did improve the sharpness of the image at speeds of 1/30 of a second and slower. The high shake (which simulates hand shake while walking) produced quite different results, with the system seemingly struggling to keep up, and it seemed to make things worse at the mid-range shutter speeds.

Image Stabilization Comparison Table			Expand
	Low Shake IS Off	Low Shake IS On	High Shake IS Off	High Shake IS On
1/500
1/250
1/125
1/60
1/30
1/15
1/8