Nikon D60 Digital Camera Review

Nikon D60

Digital Camera Review

Jun 03, 2008 - By Steve Morgenstern
3.7 The size, shape, and overall design are nearly identical to the D40, but under the hood are significant improvements, including a a more powerful processor, a kit lens incorporating image-stabilizing VR technology, enhanced in-camera editing and a two-stage dust reduction system. That said, the new camera inherits some shortcomings from its predecessors, including incompatibility with many existing Nikon lenses and a very small size and shape that's great for portability but clumsy for a manly man's grip. The D60 is sold only as a package with the camera body and a 3x zoom AF-S DX Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR lens, at $750 complete. For full details, read the complete review.
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Nikon D60

Picture Quality / Size Options (7.50)
The Nikon D60 shoots in three image sizes:

  • 3872 x 2592 (10.0 MP)
  • 2896 x 1944 (5.5 MP)
  • 1936 x 1296 (2.5 MP)  
For each size setting there are five image quality choices: three levels of JPEG compression (Fine, Normal and Basic), NEF (Nikon's RAW uncompressed format) and NEF + JPEG basic. Unfortunately there is only one NEF + JPEG setting, and probably not the one you'd want if you're planning to use your JPEGs for anything other than e-mail or placeholders. This flaw is somewhat alleviated by an in-camera utility that converts NEF files to any of the three supported JPEG compression standards. Software to edit and convert RAW files on PC or Mac is also provided. 

Picture Effects Mode (10.75)
This camera offers an exceptional array of photo manipulation tools - some useful, some slightly goofy - both while shooting and through the in-camera Retouch menu for existing shots. 

Image optimization choices include:
  • Normal (default)
  • Softer (wrinkle-forgiving portrait mode)
  • Vivid (boosts reds, greens and blues, enhances contrast, saturation and sharpness)
  • More Vivid (maxes out the above effects)
  • Portrait (lowers contrast and softens skintones)
  • Black and White
  • Custom

The "Custom" setting allows meticulous control of image sharpening, tone compensation, saturation, and hue. Users can also choose from three alternative color spaces: two flavors of sRGB (one recommended for portraits, the other for landscapes and outdoor shooting) along with Adobe RGB, used primarily in publishing and commercial printing.  

The camera also supports Active D-Lighting, an image enhancement technology that brightens shadow areas and lowers highlight glare automatically after shooting. The effect is also available for existing photos via the Retouch menu.

In-camera editing is a decided strength of the D60 – you can amuse yourself for hours on the flight home from your next vacation trip fiddling with your photos, without ever firing up a computer.

Your choices for road-warrior photo manipulation include:
  • Quick Retouch: automatically create a copy with contrast and saturation enhanced and D-Lighting (see below) applied.  Three levels of correction are selectable.
  • D-Lighting: brightens shadow areas, available at three enhancement levels
  • Red-Eye Correction
  • Trim: In-camera cropping.
  • Monochrome: creates copies in black-and-white, sepaia or cyanotype (blue-tinted)
  • Filter Effects: These include skylight (slightly filters out blue), warm (adds orange/red cast), red, green and blue intensifiers, and a cross screen that adds star glints to an image, if you're into that sort of thing.
  • Small Picture: save a lower-res copy at one of three sizes, for TV playback, web posting or e-mailing.
  • Image Overlay: Combine two RAW images.
  • NEF (RAW) Processing: adjust the image quality, image size, white balance, exposure compensation and image optmization settings for a RAW image and save the result to a JPEG.
  • Stop-motion Movie: string together multiple stills, save results as an AVI file.

 
Control Options Page 8 of 13 Connectivity / Extras
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