Nikon D60 Review

Overview

Nikon D60 Review

by Dave Etchells and Shawn Barnett
Review Date: 6/10/08

The Nikon D60 has a sensor resolution of 10.2 megapixels, and offers ISO sensitivity ranging from 100 to 1,600, with the ability to extend this to ISO 3,200 using the Hi-1 setting. In many respects, the D60 is a clone of the preceding D40x model. As we'll see though, the Nikon engineers have added a number of new features and enhancements. The combination probably isn't enough to entice D40x owners to upgrade, but owners of the 6-megapixel D40 might want to, and the Nikon D60 makes a really excellent entry-level model for those just making the move to an SLR. Even for established photographers, the D60 is a pleasure to use, making a great second (or even first) body.

The Nikon D60 has a 2.5" LCD display with 230,000 pixel resolution and a 170 degree viewing angle, which means your friends can gather 'round behind you and everyone will see the same image quality wherever they're standing. Other D60 features include extensive (and newly expanded) in-camera image editing, a full array of automatic and manual exposure modes, including some modes tuned for specific situations, like Portrait, Landscape, Child, Sports, Close up and Night portrait. There's an Auto ISO mode that lets the user select the maximum ISO and minimum shutter speed, which leaves you with some control over what Auto can do. Like the D40 and D40x before it, autofocus is only supported when using AF-S or AF-I lenses, which limits you to newer Nikon lenses. The built-in i-TTL flash has a guide number of 12m /39 ft. at ISO 100 in auto modes and 13m / 42 ft. in manual. Maximum flash sync is 1/200 second.

The Nikon D60 uses an EN-EL9 lithium-ion rechargeable battery, with a rated 500 shots per charge, and stores images on SD/SDHC memory cards (not included). Connectivity includes USB 2.0 high-speed, A/V out, and the option of an infrared remote.

The Nikon D60 started shipping in February 2008, priced at US$749.95 bundled with the new 18-55mm VR (vibration reduction) lens, slightly cheaper than the previous D40x model, despite the better optical quality and inclusion of VR on the lens. Nikon USA has since dropped the price to $699.95.

Nikon D60 User Report

by Dave Etchells & Shawn Barnett

The story of the Nikon D60 actually begins back in the fall of 2006, with the introduction of the six-megapixel D40, a compact digital SLR with good quality, an affordable price, an easy-to-use interface and image quality that belied it's entry-level pricing and control design. Nikon followed the D40's introduction with a second model, the ten-megapixel D40x in Spring 2007. Together, the two models bracketed the competition, with the D40 priced low and the D40x offering a higher megapixel count for only modest increment in price.

Now, in Spring 2008, Nikon has announced the D60, essentially a "freshened up" version of the D40x, with most of the same core attributes and capabilities, but a host of improvements as well, some of them fairly significant. Along with the D60, Nikon also announced a new version of the 18-55mm kit lens, this time adding Nikon's VR (Vibration Reduction, Nikon's name for image stabilization) technology to an already competent kit optic.

What's the same. Happily, the D60 carries forward many of the things we liked so well in the original D40 and subsequent D40x. The Nikon D60 is easy to use, presenting a very friendly face to the neophyte photographer, while still allowing experienced users to do most anything they want with the camera. The D60 maintains the same body design and control layout as the earlier models, with a grip that's remarkably comfortable for a wide range of hand sizes. Best of all, image quality is, if anything, improved. Bottom line, this is another excellent model for Nikon in the entry-level DSLR derby, excellent in virtually every aspect.

As with the D40x before it, the only external difference in the Nikon D60 is the D60 badge on the front panel. Apart from that, there are no physical differences to distinguish the D60 from its forebears. Likewise, its exposure and autofocus (AF) systems are the same so it has the same 1/200 second flash sync speed as the D40x, as well as the same 3-point AF system, and the same 3.0 frame/second continuous shooting speed.

The D60's basic imaging characteristics are also very similar to those of the D40x. It has the same color rendering as the D40x; specifically, a bit more saturated than we personally prefer, but with an easy-to-access saturation control that lets you dial down the color to suit your tastes. Detail is excellent and high-ISO performance appears to be on par with the D40x too. (That is, it's very good, with ISO 1,600 images usable for prints as large as 8.5 x 11 inches.) The one significant difference we found in our testing of the D60 was that its dynamic range wasn't quite as great as that of the D40x, which had the best dynamic range in its camera-generated JPEGs of any camera we'd tested to date. The D60's dynamic range is still really excellent though, among the very best, surpassed only by the Canon EOS-5D and the amazing Fuji S3 Pro.

Nikon D60: What's new

Continuous-Mode Burst Length. One area where advancing technology has helped the D60 is in its maximum burst length in continuous mode. While the D40 could go almost forever when shooting JPEG images, the D40x was limited to a burst of 7 shots before it would have to pause to wait for the memory card to catch up. With a sufficiently fast memory card, Nikon rates the D60 as capable of up to 100 JPEG shots without pausing, or up to 6 RAW ones. In our own testing with a Kingston 133x SD card, we confirmed the 6-shot RAW buffer capacity, but only tested the JPEG capacity as far as 20 frames in series. Few users will need a 100-shot capacity, but we've often found need for more than 7 shots in a series, so the increased buffer capacity of the D60 is welcome.

Dust Reduction. One significant addition to the Nikon D60 is the dust-reduction system first introduced on the D300 SLR in summer of 2007. Many cameras now sport dust-reduction systems of various kinds. Most involve some means of shaking the low-pass filter that covers the sensor at a high frequency. The theory is that this will cause lightly-adhered dust to simply fall away, to be captured on adhesive surfaces within the mirror box assembly, placed there for that purpose.

Nikon's approach to dust reduction also involves shaking the low-pass filter, but differs from other systems in that the shaking occurs in a front-to-back direction, rather than side-to-side. The Nikon system also uses four separate resonant frequencies, to obtain maximum effect across the entire frame area. We haven't managed to come up with any definitive way of testing anti-dust systems, but Nikon's approach offers at least the possibility of better performance: The image comes to mind of shaking out a rug, rather than rapidly sliding it back and forth on the ground. One last wrinkle: Nikon reps also mentioned that the airflow within the mirror chamber has been modified to circulate air past a capture receptacle whenever the mirror is actuated.

While we can't yet claim to have developed a definitive, repeatable test for dust reduction, we can say pretty unequivocally that we've yet to find any anti-dust system that can truly eliminate the need for occasional sensor cleaning. Systems and camera designs that reduce the incidence of dust problems can certainly help matters, but regardless of the dust-reduction system your camera might be using, sooner or later, you're going to need to use some sort of a swab- or brush-based system to clean dust from your camera's low-pass filter. Novices needn't despair, though: This isn't nearly as difficult as most people suppose. In our lab, we use the "Copper Hill Method," which had the advantages of excellent effectiveness, low materials cost, and the availability of excellent instructions online.

Active D-Lighting D-Lighting is Nikon's name for their automatic contrast-adjustment technology. It evaluates images and intelligently cuts brightness in highlight areas and boosts brightness in shadow areas to preserve subject detail and deliver better-looking photos. D-Lighting has been a Retouch menu option on Nikon cameras for some time now, being applied in playback mode to previously captured images. Beginning with the high-end D300 SLR though, Nikon introduced Active D-Lighting, which applies the D-Lighting processing on the fly, as the images are being captured. The Nikon D60 for the first time moves this technology down into a consumer model.

D-Lighting is for the most part subtle in its effects, but it does work, and seems to work well. Using it requires a bit of time for the camera to process each shot, so you'd not use it for sports or fast-paced action. Also, as noted in the example below, there may be times when you want to blow out highlights or plug shadows, for specific artistic or compositional effects. On the whole though, we think the D60's Dynamic D-Lighting is a feature that a lot of casual shooters will appreciate, as it will help with a lot of the difficult lighting situations amateurs often have to shoot in. (Harsh, noonday sun for vacation snapshots, etc.)

No D-Lighting	D-Lighting
The Active D-Lighting feature on the Nikon D60 does a good job of balancing exposure between highlight and shadow areas. Here, the terribly blown-out background is held at least somewhat in check, while midtones are smoothed out a bit. You still need to decide when to use it or not: In this case we might have wanted to blow out the background, to emphasize the subject more.

The D60 makes it easy to apply Dynamic D-Lighting on a shot, you simply press the button just behind and to the left of the shutter button and turn the command dial. The status of the Dynamic D-Lighting option is shown at all times on the rear-panel LCD or in the viewfinder while you're changing it.

Test tech Rob produced the little movie linked above. Not timeless art, but it gives you the general idea. (Click to download 2.2MB AVI file.)

Stop-motion movie. The Nikon D60 also sports a fun feature we've enjoyed on digicams before, but it took Nikon to bring it to SLRs. First appearing on the high-end D300, stop-motion movies come down market in the D60. The feature is surprisingly flexible: You can take any number of individual exposures and combine them into a movie, with a choice of three final frame sizes (640x480, 320x240, 160x120) and four frame rates (15 fps, 10 fps, 6 fps, 3 fps). Producing an animated movie is simple and a lot of fun: Collect an array of objects, plan a series of motions for them, then snap a series of photos, moving the objects in small increments between shots. When you're done, use the Stop-Motion Movie option on the Retouch Menu to assemble them into a continuous movie, saved as an AVI file.

The eye-sensor on the D60 is a welcome addition, automatically turning off the LCD display whenever you bring your eye to the eyepiece.

Eye sensor to turn off LCD display. One new feature we immediately appreciated on the D60 was its inclusion of an eye sensor that turns off its rear-panel LCD display when you bring the viewfinder up to your eye. You could turn off the D40x's display by pressing a button, but the automatic operation of the display on the D60 is a welcome addition. This is a feature that some of the D40x's competitors have had for a little while, it's nice to see it show up in the Nikon D60.

RAW Processing in-camera. RAW files capture all the information originally seen by the sensor, and save it without modification for later processing a computer. In a very real sense, they can be thought of "digital negatives", from which you can "develop" your final images. RAW format is quite popular with more advanced users, but even relative novices are getting into the game. In the D40x, you could shoot RAW only or RAW plus a basic-quality JPEG. The D60 retains those options, but lets you "develop" RAW files into JPEGs (of any quality level) in-camera, via an option on the Retouch menu.

The RAW Processing option on the Nikon D60's Retouch menu lets you process RAW files into JPEG images, applying almost any setting you'd use in snapping a photo. White balance, contrast, even exposure (within limits) can all be adjusted.

Actually, the RAW processing of the D60 goes quite a bit further than simple JPEG conversion. You can select the image quality (Fine, Normal, or Basic), image size (Large, Medium, or Small), white balance (auto, incandescent, seven kinds of fluorescent, sunlight, flash, cloudy, shade), Exposure Compensation (+/- 3 EV) and any of the Optimize Image adjustments (softer, vivid, more vivid, portrait, black & white and Custom, which lets you change sharpening, contrast, hue, color mode (sRGB or Adobe RGB) and saturation. Phew. In a nutshell, you can take a RAW file and apply pretty much any combination of camera settings to it, rendering the result as a JPEG. Pretty cool!

Quick Retouch, Expanded filter effects. In-camera retouching has been expanded in several other areas of the Nikon D60 as well. The Quick Retouch function combines D-Lighting, Saturation and Contrast adjustments into one control, with options of Low, Normal, and High. Think of it as a "universal enhancifier," able to take underexposed, blah-looking images and punch them up quite nicely, without (in most cases, at least) making them look overdone or over-processed.

The Filter Effects menu also offers a number of new effects, including Red, Green, and Blue intensifiers and a Cross-Star filter. The intensifiers do just that: They make any corresponding color in the image more intense, without affecting other colors. The Cross-Star filter mimics the diffractive "stars" that appear around small highlights with some lenses, or that can be created by the addition of a front-element filter on any lens. The D60 lets you choose the intensity of the star effect and the number and length of the rays, and apply the effect to any already-captured image on the card. Like all the retouch menu options, the Cross-Star filter makes a new copy of the image with the effect applied, rather than modifying the original. It's an interesting effect, but to our eyes it always looked artificial, not the result of an optical process as would be the case with a front-element star filter.

LCD shooting display rotates when camera does. This is a minor tweak, but a welcome one nonetheless. When you rotate the D60 from a horizontal to vertical orientation, the rear-panel data display rotates along with it. We'd seen this in other maker's SLRs already, it's nice to see it on the Nikon D60 too.

Classic Display	Graphical Display
An orientation sensor is another convenient addition to the Nikon D60: When you rotate the camera, the rear-panel display changes orientation as well.

Nikon D60	Nikon D80
What's missing from the D60 is the physical coupling you see on the Nikon D80's mount at right. This makes the D80 compatible with lenses that use Nikon's 20-year-old AF drive mechanism. Compatibility's great, but the old system does make more noise than the AF-S system used by the D60.

Compatibility. As with its predecessors, there is one point that owners of older Nikon lenses should know right up front: The D60 was designed to work primarily with AF-S lenses and AF-I teleconverters. The Nikon D40, D40x, and now D60 are built specifically for entry-level consumers, and abandon compatibility with the majority of Nikon's older AF lenses. This is the key important distinction that everyone, especially enthusiasts, should know about the D60. Though you can still mount old lenses and focus manually, most older lenses require a body-based screw-drive mechanism that the D60 lacks. We feel that this was a wise move on Nikon's part to help keep the price low and the camera small, but we've occasionally missed that compatibility, especially when wanting to mount a prime (non-zoom) lens on this pleasantly small SLR. In January of 2008, Nikon announced a 60mm f/2.8 macro lens with their AF-S ultrasonic motor, but this is at the other edge of what we'd count as a "short" lens. (Shawn typically carries a small SLR with a 50mm prime attached as his everyday camera; he prefers the low light performance and reduced depth-of-field possible with such an arrangement. Given the 1.5x crop factor of most consumer SLRs' sensors though, that lens is closer to a 75mm on a 35mm film camera: It's more of a short tele. We'd like to see an AF-S Nikkor lens more in the range of 30-35mm, for use as a "normal" lens when the crop factor is taken into consideration.)

Those who still want to use legacy lenses in autofocus mode, many of which are still in the Nikon lineup, should opt for the D80 (or a used D50 or D70). Note that you can still use older lenses with the Nikon D60 if you're okay with manual focus. The D60 can still control aperture on lenses marked D and G, and it will illuminate the AF points when an area is in focus. For more complete detail on this relatively complex issue, see the Optics section of this review.

I think it's a safe bet that most Nikon D60 owners will prefer the quieter, more modern AF-S lenses that are currently 32 in number, plus three teleconverters.

Manners. Not since the days of cloth focal plane shutters have I heard such a soft shutter sound as we get with the D40, D40x, and now the D60. Nikon has been getting better and better at this aspect of their SLR cameras, and the D40/60 line surpasses them all. It's not critical to have a nice soft shutter sound, but it does much to foster appreciation among users, and even subjects. Harsh clacking and winding is really more distracting than appealing. A softer sound allows the photographer to be part of the background rather than the center of attention. One exception to this rule is when photographing models, when it's helpful for the model to know when to change poses, but that's far from the Nikon D60's intended market.

The Nikon D60's pop-up flash is fairly quiet too, releasing with a single "clack;" more tame than the Canon Rebel XTi's far louder "zing/clunk." It can be released manually via the button on the left of the lens mount, or automatically by the camera when in fully automatic modes.

The Nikon D60's 18-55mm VR AF-S lens also focuses very quietly, thanks to its Silent Wave Motor. I found it a very useful and reliable lens. Coupled with the D60's excellent high ISO performance in low light, its f/3.5 maximum aperture wasn't that much of a limitation.

Very little flare, quite a bit less than we saw with the D40x's kit lens. There's still some flare present to be found when faced with extreme backlighting (as in the tree branches above right), but the bottom line is a dramatic improvement over the previous kit lens.

One big bonus with the D60 relative to its predecessors is its kit lens. The Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VF AF-S DX has the same focal length and aperture range as the previous model, but adds Vibration Reduction (Nikon's name for image stabilization) for sharper photos under dim lighting conditions. Possibly even more significant though, is that the new kit lens almost entirely banishes the problems with lens flare we found in the previous version. With the previous 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II, lens flare was very noticeable around high-contrast objects, particularly in the corners of the frame. We said we felt that flare was acceptable (or at least not a great surprise) in a lens at such a low price point, but we did find it very distracting in many of our shots. Happily, the new lens makes dramatic strides in this area. There's still some minor flare visible if you confront it with really strong backlighting, but it's dramatically better than what we saw in the earlier model.

Vibration Reduction (image stabilization) is a very popular lens/camera feature, and with good reason: When you're shooting at slow shutter speeds, camera shake can easily blur an otherwise priceless photo. VR isn't a panacea, but it can easily give you another stop or two (a factor of 2 to 4) of slower shutter speeds without being subject to blur. As of this writing (in late May, 2008), we're still refining our image stabilization test protocols, and haven't tested the D60's kit lens yet. Just playing with it informally though, its VR does seem to provide a significant reduction in blur at slow shutter speeds.

Comfortable grip.

Experience. Like the rest of the D40/D60 line, the D60's grip is notably comfortable. Shawn and I both would prefer a little deeper grip, but what's there is fine for a camera this compact, and the smaller grip size does a lot to make the camera comfortable for women, children, and others with smaller hand sizes. As it is, our index fingers find the shutter release immediately, our other fingers wrapping around the reset of the grip comfortably. Shawn manages to get three fingers around the grip, I personally find the last knuckle of my ring finger curling below the bottom of the camera, my pinkie tucked in against my palm and not interacting with the grip at all. Normally, this would bother me, but in the case of the D60, it feels quite natural and very secure.

On the back of the camera, the combination of a slight lip and indent provides a natural home for your thumb, nestled between the AE/AF-lock button and the Command Dial. It's just a nudge one way or the other to reach either of these controls, easy to accomplish without devoting conscious thought to it.

Turning back to the top panel again, the exposure compensation button is just behind the shutter release, with the button dedicated to Active D-Lighting just to its left. Both of these are easy to access with the camera held to your eye, with none of the fumbling around we sometimes experience when trying to shoot new DSLRs without taking our eyes from the viewfinder. One user-interface note though: Both controls are set by pressing the associated button while rotating the Command Dial. Readouts in the viewfinder tell you very clearly the setting changes you're making when you're looking through the eyepiece. The rear-panel LCD is likewise very informative about changes in exposure compensation, but the icon that signals changes in the D-Lighting setting can be hard to pick out in some of the "Graphic" display schemes. While the other icons dim when D-Lighting is being set, the effect can still be a little subtle: Why not make this icon flash or get bigger when you hit the D-Lighting button? It'd make operation a bit less mysterious for beginners or others unfamiliar with the camera.

All in all though, it's hard to find fault with the Nikon D60's user interface: It's a very straightforward, simple system to learn to use, with controls right where your fingers expect to find them, and with a very logical operating scheme.

Thumb dial?

On the D40x, Shawn often found himself changing the Mode dial setting by simply sliding his thumb up to spin it to its next setting. On the D60, we found the Mode dial a little stiffer than it was on the D40x (at least on our samples of both cameras), so we more often found ourselves gripping the dial with our fingers to move it. Not a big deal; Shawn found the D40x's dial a bit easier to use, Dave tended to grab it with his fingers anyway.

Recessed strap loops.

Shawn seldom uses camera straps, so the lashing points on the camera often bother him, jutting out into his hand or swinging around as they often do. But the strap loops on the Nikon D60 are recessed into the camera body on both sides, a welcome change from previous Nikon DSLR designs, which either flop and rattle on the pro end or jab into your hand on the consumer side. (By contrast, Dave uses camera straps pretty consistently. He likes the fact that the D60's strap lugs have a deep enough recess behind them that it's actually feasible to get a strap threaded through them. On some cameras, it's a real exercise in frustration to get the strap threaded through the loops.)

Function button. As we did with the D40x, we set the D60's Function button to ISO, which we change most often.

Controls. The Nikon D60's control layout is simple and easy to adapt to. We even like the position of the Function button. This is a button you can reprogram to bring up your most frequently adjusted menu item. We currently have it set to ISO. Just press the Function button on the side of the lens with your left thumb and turn the Command dial. The status display lights up the Fn box and you can see the ISO numbers increment up or down. We also like the positioning of the Fn button relative to the Flash button, located just above it: There's plenty of space between the two controls, so you're never in danger of confusing one with the other when you're working quickly. One thing that we did miss though, was a readout of ISO in the viewfinder: As it is, you have to take your eye from the viewfinder and look at the rear panel to tell what ISO setting you've selected.

Easy adjustments.

A good many other essential items are shown on the Nikon D60's Status display, and can easily be controlled with only a few more buttons. Just press the Zoom/info button, and select the icons across the bottom or right side of the screen with any of the four arrow directions on the Multi selector. When you reach the one you want, hit the OK button in the center of the Multi selector and a menu is displayed with photographic examples representing the various modes. Make your selection, press the OK button again, and you're ready to shoot with your new setting. The example shots are very much like those we've seen on consumer digicams over the past few years, and it is appropriate to see them here on the Nikon D60, an SLR aimed at consumers.

LCD. The screen is a big, bright 2.5 inch display with a wide viewing angle in all directions to help you show off your pictures. The camera itself is so small that the screen seems to dominate the Nikon D60's back panel.

We're once again happy to see that there's no silly snap-on screen protector in the Nikon D60's box. They fog up, add two extra surfaces to reflect glare, and just bug us. We're told the screen cover is good for protecting the screen from shirt button scratches. Our usual nylon buttons don't mar anything, but we suppose harder buttons might. To this day, however, we've never even seen a scratched LCD display on an SLR; so just be aware, use the care you should with your delicate photographic tool, and you should be able to maintain a scratch-free LCD cover glass with little trouble.

Most SLR manufacturers have ditched the additional monochrome data-readout LCD in favor of using the main color LCD as a status display on their consumer SLRs. About half have also recognized that it helps to have the LCD turn off when you put the camera to your eye. With the D60, Nikon has finally joined that half. (Hurray!) The Canon Rebel XTi and Sony A100 have IR sensors in place to detect your face against the viewfinder so that the screen shuts off. The Nikon D40x just kept the LCD on until you half-pressed on the shutter button, but the D60 now has IR sensors like Canon and Sony's. It's perhaps a minor point, but a refinement we're happy to see, nonetheless.

Graphic display.

If you like, you can turn off the D60's status display, which Nikon calls the Shooting Information Display. On by default, it goes off after a few seconds at idle, to save batteries, and comes back on when you press the Active D-Lighting/Reset button behind the Shutter release button, the Info or Help buttons on the rear panel, or touch lightly and release the shutter button. You can choose among three displays, and pick different ones when in PASM vs full-auto and Scene modes. The Graphic display is set by default. It shows a wheel in the left corner that represents a shutter speed dial and aperture display. The aperture display "stops down" to approximate what the lens blades will be doing, while a row of dots around the aperture give an approximate idea of shutter speed (more dots = faster shutter speeds). It seems like a good idea to educate those who are unfamiliar with how cameras work, though they'll have to be the types who pay close attention to technical details. You can also have pur own picture on the LCD screen, appearing behind the controls as a backdrop in Wallpaper mode. For the most part, I prefer the Classic display, with its no-nonsense, bold digital display of the important data. It looks essentially like the monochrome Status LCDs you'll find on semi-pro and pro SLRs.

Classic display.

On the D40 and D40x, we found the LCD display rather slow to refresh as you changed settings. This included aperture, shutter speed, and EV (exposure value) settings. In the Nikon D60, the display seems to update faster in Graphic mode, but we found the exposure compensation indicator still lagged the control wheel movements somewhat, frequently causing us to overshoot the mark we were aiming for. When attempting to set -1/3 EV, for example, the camera wouldn't make the change, so we'd turn the Command dial again. Then the camera would catch up and move it to -2/3. The LED display in the optical viewfinder doesn't have this problem, however, moving instantaneously to reflect your choice. This is an unfortunate bug that makes using EV adjustment and manual modes with the Nikon D60 more difficult in the Classic display mode than they need to be. (This seems like it's just an oversight in the firmware: After a little fiddling, it seems clear that the EV indication only updates in Classic mode when the "0" at the center of the scale blinks on. By contrast, the display seems to update more or less immediately in Graphic mode. Hopefully, Nikon will issue a minor firmware update at some point in the future to fix this.)

Optical viewfinder. Luke, the lab technician, and Shawn both found the diopter control difficult to set, while Dave was less troubled with it. (Likely because Dave has a longer fingernail on his right thumb, making it easier for him to reach in under the eyecup.) We also noticed that the D60 didn't adjust for our eyesight well enough (which isn't unusual for Shawn and Dave). Rather than the wheel Nikon used on the D200 and D80, the D60 has a slider next to the rubber eyepiece. Changing it while looking through the viewfinder can be cumbersome, and you frequently slide past your desired setting due to the force necessary to move it in the first place.

The viewfinder display is very good, showing all the important information, including which AF point is selected, and there's a little question mark icon that flashes in low light or any other situations the Nikon D60 thinks you should make an adjustment. To see what's up, just pull the camera from your eye and press the question mark button on the left of the LCD display. Here in our offices, it usually says, "Lighting is poor; flash recommended." We think that's a good feature to have in a consumer camera, and the note's not condescending. What we don't like is the incessant flashing of the question mark in the viewfinder and on the back LCD when we're trying to do something unconventional. It's not a big deal, though, just a rant, but one that enthusiasts might want to make note of: the D60's help feature just might bug you.

AF points. Praise the designers for putting bright LED brackets on all three of the D60's AF points. Even the excellent Nikon D80 still has the very cool looking, but too often worthless LCD/faint LED combo. We like a bright red LED to tell us where the camera is focusing, as exists on the entire Canon SLR lineup. These are big, obvious brackets. And yes, there are only three, but we've all somewhat fallen out of love with multiple AF points on SLRs. Much more frequently these days, we just lock a camera to its center point and work from there. The center point is usually more accurate, and we find that SLRs just aren't as accurate as digicams have been at guessing what we want to keep in focus.

There is one small problem related to AF points and the Nikon D60's size that Shawn found in the D40x, and that carries over to the D60. As mentioned, we prefer to lock it to the center AF point, but putting the D60 into Single Area mode is the only way to set this. Unfortunately, you can't exactly lock it to the center point; instead you use the left and right arrows on the Multi-controller to select which AF point you want to use. Because the area for your thumb on the D60 is small, he found that he often accidentally presses the left and right arrows on the Multi controller, changing the default AF point. That's a bit unwelcome when you raise the camera to your eye for a quick candid portrait and the D60 focuses on the subject's belt. Most casual users will doubtless do better to leave the D60 in Closest subject mode.

Solid SD card door.

Doors and latches. The Nikon D60's SD card door opens with a firm slide to the rear, then it swings open under power of a good stiff spring. A rubber bumper softens and quiets its impact. We like this design more than others that just flop around loose.

Stronger springs hold the battery in place.

Nikon also improved the battery door and its retention spring. The Nikon D70 and D80 had weak, mushy springs on their latches, and could open if you pressed in the just the wrong way on the bottom of the camera. Not so with the D60. The latch is is quite firm. Once that door is open, the battery seems to slide right out. But it only drops out about 3/8 inch, at which point it stops. This is just enough for you to grab the battery and pull it out the rest of the way, yet you don't have to worry about the battery popping out onto the floor. Nice. We noticed that the battery of the D70 and D80 were halted in the same way, but it was a thin wire that did the arresting, leading us to wonder how long that would last. On the D40x and D60, the arresting is done by a wide bit of spring steel. That should last longer.

I've also found the battery life to be quite good, enduring several days of regular shooting. According to CIPA standards, the Nikon D60's 1,000 mAh EN-EL9 is good for about 500 shots on a single charge with the VR lens (520 with the non-VR 18-55mm), up from 470 shots with the non-VR on the D40x. The manual says it'll recharge from empty in 90 minutes, but we still recommend a second battery: It's a drag to be without your camera while you wait for the battery to charge; and the battery invariably dies when you need it most. The best news, though, is that most lithium-ion batteries can sit charged for a long time (often a month or more) and still be good when you need them.

Flash. As with the D40x, it's a small step down that the Nikon D60 doesn't have the D40's 1/500 second flash sync, especially since none of these cameras support FP (Focal Plane) sync mode. As we mentioned, the reason the D60 doesn't have this speedy x-sync is because it uses a full-speed shutter mechanism, rather than relying on electronic "gating" of the sensor array.

Put simply, gating a sensor means that you're making the exposure by opening the shutter completely, then turning the sensor on and off at the speed you desire. In the case of the D40, the maximum gate speed is 1/4000 second. But why is the flash sync speed reduced on the D40x and D60? Because to make a flash exposure, the shutter must be completely open while the flash fires, and the fastest speed that allows this is 1/200 second. At 1/250, the second curtain of the focal plane shutter has already started closing before the first one fully opens, so when the flash fires, part of the sensor will be covered by one or the other of the shutters. So between 1/250 and 1/4000 second, the shutter never fully opens, and is instead an increasingly narrow slit that travels across the sensor. (There is often a way to overcome this with external flashes, which pulse as the slit travels across the sensor, but the D60's on-camera flash is not capable of this FP, or Focal Plane mode, nor does it support external units in FP mode: The latter an obvious de-featuring of the camera to encourage more sophisticated users to opt for the more expensive D80 body.)

The other missing component to the D60's flash picture, shared by the D40 and D40x, is its inability to serve as a Commander in the Nikon Advanced Wireless Lighting System. Mount an SB-800, and that limitation can be overcome, but you'd do better to purchase a Nikon D80 if you want to employ the Nikon Advanced Wireless Lighting System, because each SB-800 will run about $320-$400. (The increase in street price when going from a D60 to a D80 is currently about $300, and you get a lot of other camera features rolled into the deal as well.)

Image quality. As with the D40x, it's the Nikon D60's excellent image quality that makes recommending this digital SLR so easy. See the Exposure and Optics tabs for the full story. Most impressive about the D40x was that Nikon managed to improve on the D40's already exceptional high-ISO performance. We were a little disappointed to see that the D60's images show a bit more noise at ISO 1,600 than did the D40x, but then realized that Nikon changed the default noise-reduction setting on the D60. The D40x had its high-ISO noise reduction option set to On by default, but the D60's setting defaults to Off. Nikon also seems to have tweaked their noise reduction algorithms a little, to leave in a bit more noise, but also a bit more subject detail at high ISOs. So even with the high-ISO noise reduction option enabled, the D60's images are a bit noisier than those from the D40x, but it does a bit better job at preserving subtle subject detail.

Regardless of the noise setting, overall noise levels are quite low: Owners will be able to make great-looking 8x10 prints from ISO 1,600 shots captured with their Nikon D60s. As we mentioned above though, a huge plus for the D60 is the Vibration Reducing lens that comes standard on it. This will let you get sharp images with shutter speeds from two to four times slower than with a non-VR lens. While you still have to worry about blur from subject motion, the VR lens will make it practical to shoot at ISO 800 or even 400 in situations where you'd otherwise really need the shutter speeds afforded by ISO 1,600. Bottom line, the Nikon D60 is an excellent camera for use in situations with limited lighting.

In common with the D40x, the Nikon D60's default color settings produce very bright, saturated images. How you feel about this will depend on your personal tastes. Most consumers like really bright, saturated color. If that describes you, you'll be entirely happy with the images the Nikon D60 produces. Personally, both of us prefer something a bit less saturated. Fortunately, the D60 offers some accommodation in this area. Optimize Image is the first option on the Shooting menu. Select it, scroll down to the Custom option, and select that. Drop down to Saturation and select "- Moderate". Be sure to scroll back up and click the OK button on the "Done" option, to register the change. The result will be more natural-looking photos, with colors closer to real life. We like the results quite a bit, they coincide with our personal preferences pretty well. It'd be nice though, to see more steps here, to let users tune the look of the D60's images a bit more finely.

One area where the Nikon D60 didn't quite measure up to the performance of the D40x was in its dynamic range (the range of light to dark values that it can distinguish): When we ran our Imatest "deep analysis," which we usually reserve for SLRs, we found its dynamic range consistently measured about a half-stop less than that of the D40x. That said, it does quite well on this score compared to almost all of its competition. Of all the cameras we've tested to date, the only ones that beat it are the Rebel XSi in its default mode, which has Canon's Auto Lighting Optimizer turned on), the D40x, the Fuji S3 Pro, and the Canon EOS-5D. (It serves noting that the Canon Rebel XSi comes in about a quarter-stop behind the D60 when the ALO option is disabled.) So the Nikon D60 is no slouch, its dynamic range stacks up with the best of the best: It's just that the D40x was really extraordinary in this regard.

That said though, we did find that in practice, the D60 tended to lose highlight detail a little early under contrasty lighting: It seems that a lot of its dynamic range capability comes at the lower end of the tone scale. In other words, if you're faced with really strong highlights, underexpose to hold onto detail in them: You'll be able to pull quite a bit of detail back up out of the shadows in the image.

See the Optics and Exposure tabs for the rest on the Nikon D60. In short, though, the D60 is a camera you can buy with confidence and be sure you'll love the pictures. (We said the same thing about the D40x, it holds equally true for the D60.)

Comparisons

Nikon D60 vs Canon XSi. D60: 126 x 94 x 64mm, 544g. XSi: 128.8 x 97.5 x 61.9mm, 539g.

Nikon D60 vs Olympus E-420. D60: 126 x 94 x 64mm, 544g. E-420: 129.5 x 91 x 53mm, 453g.

Since we reviewed the D40x, the list of competing cameras in the "compact SLR" category has continued to grow. The Olympus E-410, even smaller than the Nikon D60, has now been followed by the E-420, and the Rebel XTi has now been replaced by the XSi, with closely similar dimensions. Other consumer SLRs, like the Sony A350 and Pentax K200D are only a little larger.

The Nikon D60 appears to compete well against the new Canon Digital Rebel XSi, despite the fact that the XSi sports a considerably higher price tag. The XSi does have areas in which it bests the Nikon D60, perhaps most noticeably in high-ISO image quality: Both cameras have very similar noise levels, but the D60 trades off more subtle subject detail to achieve its low noise figures. The XSi also has 20% more pixels in its sensor, but that difference frankly isn't all that significant: It amounts to only about a 10% difference in inherent resolution, so probably isn't enough by itself to shift the choice toward the Canon. Other notable strengths of the XSi are its more sophisticated 9-point AF array that works better under low light conditions and full compatibility with Canon's entire line of EOS lenses dating back to 1989. One advantage the XTi had over the Nikon D40x is now removed, in that the D60 now has a dust removal system as well. (In our experience though, dust-removal systems work better as marketing points than they do as truly useful photographic tools: You're eventually going to have to clean your sensor anyway, regardless of whether your camera sports "dust removal" technology or not.)

In terms of image quality, you'll get excellent photos from either camera. At their default settings, the Canon Rebel XSi is noticeably more conservative in terms of saturation and contrast than the Nikon D60, but as noted, either camera's contrast and saturation can be tailored to better match personal preferences. Like the D40x, the Nikon D60 also offers ISO 3,200, one stop more than the XSi will deliver. Below we've cropped from our Still Life shots taken at ISO 1,600 to give a closer look at the two approaches to high ISO images. Both will make great prints and deliver a lot more than any digicam (non-SLR) of comparable resolution, so what you see below does not take away from the overall quality that both cameras capture.

Canon Rebel XSi, high ISO noise reduction off
Nikon D60, noise reduction off
Canon Rebel XSi, high ISO noise reduction on
Nikon D60, noise reduction on
Different approaches. Here at ISO 1,600, the highest that the XSi and D60 have in common, you can see the two different approaches to maintaining a quality image at high ISO settings. In each group of four images, the top two show results from the Canon XSi, the pair below below the Nikon D60. Different eyes will see each image differently. In darker areas, the XSi generally works harder to smooth out the luminance (brightness) noise, but at a slight cost to detail (somewhat made up for by its slightly higher resolution. In lighter areas though, its images hold more contrast and sharpness. Its default noise reduction leaves more chroma (color) noise in the image than the D60's does. at their high noise-reduction settings though, both do a good job of flattening chroma noise, with otherwise somewhat similar results in darker and highlight areas. In the left image, color and contrast are more pumped in the Nikon image, which tends to reveal the anti-noise processing around the edges of the peppers. Likewise, the orange leaves on the cloth in the background are brighter, but with less tonal range than in the Canon image. Most photographers who post-process their images on a computer would be drawn to the Canon XSi's images, because they have software that can make more of the image than the Nikon D60's bundled software did. But truthfully, the Nikon D60 image will print a little better, appearing more bold and sharp up to about 11x14.

As mentioned above, the other similar-sized camera the Nikon D60 competes with is the Olympus E-420. Here, the E-420 is priced a good hundred dollars below the D60 (using "street" prices for comparison), so the E-420 could make a compelling case for a photographer on a budget. The E-420 also includes the increasingly popular Live View option, that lets you use the camera's rear-panel LCD screen as a viewfinder. This is a comforting, familiar mode for users stepping up from point & shoot cameras, as it lets them shoot with their SLR in the same way they've become accustomed to with their digicams. The drawback is that Live View mode on the E-420 also means considerably slower shutter response, putting you back digicam-level capability when it comes to capturing fast-breaking action. That said though, Live View is a very popular SLR feature these days.

Olympus E-420, default noise reduction
Nikon D60, noise reduction off
Olympus E-420, default noise reduction (Saturation and sharpening adjusted to approximate D60's)
Different approaches, Round II. Here again, ISO 1,600 is the highest that the E-420 and D60 have in common, things look somewhat reminiscent of the comparison against the Canon XSi above. Saturation is lower in the E-420 shot (which tends to help image noise a fair bit), and the E-420's shot is also somewhat softer, which does a lot to mask what noise is there. To the eye, the D60 shows a bit more noise in shadow areas, and more noise artifacts around the edges of the peppers on the left, but also delivers a much crisper, punchier-looking photo. When you sharpen and bump up the color saturation of the E-420's images in Photoshop (as seen in the third pair of crops, at the bottom), the noise rises to a similar level to that in the D60's image, but with somewhat less detail in the orange leaves in the swatch of cloth at the left. As of this writing, we hadn't shot still life examples with the E-420's high-ISO noise filtering enabled, so can't show you a comparison of images with the higher filtering settings. Overall, the Olympus E-420 does a surprisingly credible job given its smaller sensor, but most consumers would probably feel that the Nikon D60 carries the day, thanks to its sharper, more vibrant images, particularly when looking at printed results.

Olympus has come a long way in extracting more data and less noise from the smaller sensors of the Four-Thirds format used in their SLRs. That said, we think the Nikon D60 still holds an edge over the Olympus E-420 in image quality. Comparing ISO 1,600 shots from the two cameras, the images from the E-420 are somewhat less saturated, with less sharpening applied in-camera. As a result, they look smoother and a bit softer than images from the D60. When we boosted the saturation and sharpening to match the D60's images, noise rose to similar levels, but we felt the D60 retained a bit more detail. Also, while a bit contrasty itself, the D60's tonal scale is much more manageable than that of the E-420. Some of the choice between these two cameras will depend on whether you prefer the brighter color of the D60 or the more technically accurate but duller-looking color of the E-420. Color rendering (and noise levels, for that matter) are very much matters of personal preference, so you'll need to let your eyes be your guide in this regard. For our part, we'd say that the Nikon D60 delivers better-looking images, albeit at a price that's a hundred dollars higher, and without the allure of a Live View feature.

Appraisal. Like the D40x before it, the Nikon D60 is a real gem. Consumers should want one, intermediate photographers should want one, and pros would do well to carry one too. The Nikon D60 is one of the finest "family" cameras on the market, easily upholding the standards of its predecessors, which is a tall order.

As with the D40x, we've both really enjoyed shooting with the D60, to the point that we'd seriously consider it as a second camera to something like a D80 or D300. Those cameras are great for more serious work, but they're also bigger and heavier. The D60 is a camera for capturing fun and family. It's purpose-built for doing just that. And you can still slap high quality glass on it and shoot with the pros anytime you like. The Nikon D60 is perfect for dropping into a small daypack for a hike or picnic, and isn't a tedious weight hanging from a neckstrap. It doesn't take a lot of space, and it comes out of the bag quickly. It focuses and shoots so quietly, you're less likely to scare the animals you're trying to capture.

Intermediate photographers wanting a camera to start a business on a budget should look to the Nikon D80, as it has features that make it more suited for professional photography. Those who already own a bagful of Nikon glass should look instead to the D80 or D300, because they'll want to use that fine Nikkor equipment as long as they can. But if you're just getting started in SLR photography and want a light, sweet, competent, and downright friendly digital SLR, the Nikon D60 is a superb choice.

In the Box

The Nikon D60 kit ships with the following items in the box:

• Nikon D60 body
• AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR Lens
• Body cap
• Front lens cap
• Camera strap
• Eyepiece cap
• Rubber eyecup
• USB cable
• Quick charger (MH-23)
• AC power cord
• Li-ion battery (EN-EL9)
• Accessory shoe cover
• Lens cap
• PictureProject CD ROM
• Quick start guide
• Instruction manual
• Warranty and registration card

Recommended Accessories

• Large capacity SD memory card. These days, a 2GB or 4GB card is inexpensive enough
• Camera case for protection
• Accessory lenses
• Accessory flash: SB-400, SB-600, SB-800

Nikon D60 Conclusion

With the D60, Nikon continues what's been an exceptionally successful line of cameras reaching back to the D40 (which is still widely available in the market as of this writing (June, 2008) at very low prices). As a follow-on to the D40x, the Nikon D60 maintains most of the same specs and features, but adds a number of minor features in the camera body and a new, better-quality VR (vibration reduction) kit lens, all at a list price $50 lower than its predecessor.

The Nikon D60 is a natural fit in most hands. Its controls are where they should be for easy use, and the D60 is a well-behaved guest at parties with its pleasantly soft shutter sound. A big, bright LCD is great for reviewing photos from a wide variety of angles; and Nikon's added the eye detection we asked for in our D40x review, to turn off the LCD when you bring the viewfinder to your eye.

Existing Nikon owners should be careful to note that like the D40 and D40x, the Nikon D60 can only autofocus with AF-S lenses. Those who want to attach a short, fast prime (non-zoom) lens for indoor low-light shooting should also note that Nikon doesn't currently make any such lenses in AF-S. The good news, however, is that the Nikon D60's low light performance at ISO 1,600 is excellent, even without noise reduction turned on. It's so good that we don't really feel like we're pushing the D60 until we jump into the "expanded" territory of ISO 3,200.

The upgraded kit lens has eliminated one our few areas of disappointment with the D40x: The lens on the Nikon D60 is noticeably better optically, and includes Nikon's excellent VR (vibration reduction) technology in the bargain. There's still a bit more chromatic aberration at the wide angle end than we'd like to see but the earlier kit lens's issues with flare seem to be entirely banished.

No matter how you look at it, the Nikon D60 stands up well against the competition, with great image quality at all speeds, and near-perfect utility as a family camera. Its very fun to use (your kids will have a blast with its stop-action animation feature), polite, attractive, and well-built; just the kind of companion you want to have along on your next family outing. The Nikon D60 still doesn't really obsolete the D40, which we continue to recommend strongly and list as a Dave's Pick, but it's a bet better in a few key areas, and offers a range of added features: High praise indeed. Own either and you'll know why we've made the Nikon D60 a Dave's Pick.

Design

Nikon D60 Design

Roll-over the various controls and features with your mouse for a brief description.

Front View.

Left View.

Right View.

Top View.

Back View.

Bottom View.

Operation

Nikon D60 Operation

As we noted in the D40x review, Nikon seems to have really taken pains with their more recent consumer DSLR models to make its user interface as clean, uncluttered, and approachable as possible. To achieve this, they eliminated two buttons on the back panel that were present on the D50, and consolidated the top-panel data readout functions into a very attractive and logically laid-out display on the large, rear-panel LCD screen. They also put the mode dial closer at hand when you're holding the grip, and added a new scene mode for available-light (non-flash) photography. Experienced shooters may miss the terse convenience of a top-panel data readout, but we think most D60 users will appreciate the size and clarity of the new shooting display on the main LCD screen.

Since we're talking about the rear-panel Shooting display, let's take a look at it:

Nikon D60 Shooting Mode Display
The "Graphic" display is visually appealing, and shows you roughly what the lens aperture is doing	The "Classic" format is a bit less artistic, but uses larger fonts for better readability.

There are two main display modes, the new Graphic display that helps the user visualize what's happening with shutter speed and lens aperture, and the more conventional looking Classic format, which displays the same basic settings information, but uses larger fonts and icons. I personally liked the Graphic format a lot, but can see a time coming when my eyes will prefer the larger type of the Classic display. Interestingly, you can choose different display formats for different camera operating modes: An option on the Setup menu lets you choose different formats for the Digital Vari-Program (Scene) modes than for the PASM (programmed, aperture-priority, shutter-priority, or manual) exposure modes. Potentially a nice feature, by which you could set the camera up with the Graphic display option for a novice user, but have it automatically operate in Classic mode when the more advanced user was shooting using one of the PASM modes. You can also change the color of the displays, with choices of white, black or orange for the Graphic display (white shown above), and blue, black, or orange for the Classic mode (blue shown).

There's a third Shooting Mode display option that had me scratching my head a bit. A Wallpaper option lets you pick an image from the memory card, and use it as a "wallpaper" design behind the shooting menu elements. Playing with a few different images, I found that most made the displayed information almost impossible to read, as seen at right. If you took some time with it, I suppose you might be able to find an image that was attractive, yet didn't detract too much from readability. (For instance, put a small subject toward the upper left-hand corner, and leave most of the rest of the frame blank.)

The rear-panel display carries quite a bit of information about current camera settings, more than we're accustomed to seeing on a DSLR. New for the D60 is automatic rotation of the status screen, similar to Sony's models. (A welcome addition to the D60.) Here's a look at the information that's presented:

There's a lot of information shown there, but a logical layout and large/sharp LCD screen makes it easy to tell what you're looking at. The column of data down the right-hand side of the landscape screen (bottom of the portrait screen) and the row across the bottom of the landscape screen (middle of the portrait screen) represents settings you can adjust directly from this screen.

Changing Shooting Mode Options
The right-hand column of the Shooting display acts as an option menu for various camera settings.	The "image assisted" menus on the D60 are designed to make it easier to know when to use different options.

As shown above, pressing the i button on the back of the camera activates the right-hand option column, letting you scroll through them with the Multi-selector keys. The shot on the left above shows the White Balance option selected, and the shot on the right shows one of the screens that appear when you're changing the White Balance setting. As part of the D60's designed-in user-friendliness, most options on the shooting menu include "assist" images, to help you understand the types of shots or conditions that each setting is most appropriate for.

For those interested in seeing all the nitty gritty details, we've prepared a page showing all the options on the D60 Shooting Menu. (Note, there's a ton of screen shots on it, so the page could take a while to download if you're on a dialup connection.)

Optics

Nikon D60 Optics

Kit Lens

The Nikon D60 ships in kit form with an updated version of the Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens that originally came with the D40 and D40x kits. To better compete with models from brands such as Olympus, Pentax and Sony that have built-in image-stabilization, the new D60 kit lens comes with Nikon's excellent Vibration Reduction (VR) technology to help compensate for camera shake. We tested a sample of the Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED AF-S DX VR on SLRgear.com. Optical performance is so-so wide open, but the lens is capable of very good sharpness if stopped down one or two f-stops, and the added image stabilization should come in handy in low-light situations. While sharpness wide-open is only average, this new kit lens performs better overall than the original, non-VR 18-55mm, and is enormously better when it comes to flare: The previous version was subject to rather extreme veiling flare when shooting high-contrast subjects under bright conditions.

Kit lenses work well enough for most consumers, and serve their purpose, getting you started without breaking the bank; but a big part of the attraction with SLRs is that you can easily trade up to a better lens when your finances improve, and extend your reach to wider angle, telephoto, or macro photography just by adding to your lens collection. The 18-55mm VR lens that comes with the D60 will do a fine job until such time as budget and desire lead you to start building a lens collection.

Lens Compatibility

Like the Nikon D40 and D40x before it, the D60 drops support for the older autofocus lenses whose focus mechanisms were driven from the camera. These lenses have what looks like a little screwdriver slot on their mounting flange that couples with a protruding, screwdriver-looking shaft on the camera body. A motor in the camera body thus drives the lens mechanics to adjust focus.

More recent Nikkor lenses have motors built into the lens body, which tend to be both faster and quieter than the old-style drive system, as well as allowing the camera body to be lighter, smaller and cheaper. These newer lenses carry an AF-S or AF-I designation in their name, and are the only types of lenses the D60 can autofocus with. CPU-equipped lenses lacking built-in focus motors can be used in manual focus mode, and type G or D lens types will also support full 3D color matrix metering for more accurate exposures, particularly when flash is being used. (You can tell CPU-equipped lenses by the set of five electrical contacts arrayed on the side of the lens flange.) The table below (courtesy Nikon Inc.) tells the full story of lens compatibility for the D60.

The lack of an onboard focus motor is a key feature distinguishing the D40, D40x and D60 from the D80. If you need to use older lenses (or a lot of Nikon's current line of prime (non-zoom)) lenses with your DSLR, you need the D80, D200 or D300. This is a factor that could turn away current Nikon shooters, but it makes sense for an entry-level camera like the D60. Dropping the AF motor greatly helps with size and weight issues, and probably battery drain as well. Newcomers to the SLR world are likely to be perfectly content sticking with AF-S lenses, and all of Nikon's digital-specific DX lenses are AF-S models, providing a pretty wide range of options.

Autofocus System

While the D40, D40x and D60 carry over a lot of the capabilities of the D80, their autofocus system is one area where cost-cutting has had a noticeable impact. The D80 has 11 active AF points, but the D60 has only three, arranged horizontally across the frame. With the more limited AF array, the D60's ability to track moving subjects will be less than that of the D80, but the 3-point AF array isn't unreasonable to find in its price bracket.

This is one area where the interests of novice and more experienced shooters may actually converge. Both would benefit from the D80's more sophisticated AF system, and the argument could be made that novices actually need a better AF system than advanced amateurs, as they'll be less accustomed to paying attention to what the camera is focusing on. That said, it's not too difficult to check that one of the 3 AF areas is covering your subject, and it's a relatively small step up to learn to aim the camera and lock focus.

Focus Options

The Nikon D60 offers pretty well all the focus options of the D80, the main difference being that options for setting the focus mode are presented on the LCD screen, as opposed to a little single/continuous/manual focus switch on the camera body itself. Many Nikkor lenses also have an Auto/Manual focusing switch on their barrels. If the switch on the lens barrel is set to "M," focusing will be under manual control, regardless of the setting of the switch on the camera body. Most AF-S lenses with the built-in Silent Wave focus motor let you manually focus the lens at any time, regardless of the camera's focus setting, so there's less need for a body-mounted focus-mode switch: The menu selection should do fine for most users.

To select between the three types of AF, you just navigate to the Focus Mode option on the camera's shooting display (or to the identical Focus Mode option in the Custom Settings Menu system) and choose between AF-A (Auto Servo), AF-S (Single Servo), and AF-C (Continuous Servo). Manual focus is the fourth option. Single Servo simply means that the camera sets focus only once, when the Shutter button is first pressed halfway, and is best for still objects. Continuous Servo means that the camera continuously adjusts the focus, as long as the Shutter button is halfway pressed, and is best for moving subjects. The Auto setting (added to Nikon's D-series SLR line with the earlier D50) lets the camera select the servo mode, depending on the movement of the subject.

The Nikon D60 is similar to the D40 and D40x in how it behaves in out-of-focus conditions. Some SLRs will let you fire the shutter in Continuous Servo mode if the lens hasn't achieved focus, but not in Single Servo mode. The D60 never fires the shutter if the lens isn't focused. (Unless of course, you have the camera or lens set to manual focus operation.) This more restrictive shooting could be an inconvenience to more experienced shooters, but will almost certainly be a benefit to novices, as the camera itself will guard against capturing out-of-focus images.

Focus can be confined to one of the three specific focus points in both Single Area mode, and in Dynamic Area which offers focus tracking. Single Area AF simply means that the camera sets focus based on the specific area you've designated. Dynamic AF employs all three of the autofocus areas. When Dynamic Area focusing is enabled, the camera first focuses on the subject in the chosen focus area. After the camera has initially "locked on" to the subject, if it moves to a different AF area, the camera will shift its focus to "follow" the subject. This is great for irregularly moving subjects. (Sports and kids come to mind.) In both Dynamic and Single Area AF modes, you can change the primary focus area using the right or left directions on the Multi-Selector pad. Closest Subject Priority is a third option, selected via either the AF-Area mode option on the shooting screen or by a custom settings menu item. Closest Subject Priority means that the camera will focus on the closest object that falls under one of the three focus points.

There are two methods by which you can lock focus with the Nikon D60. The first is via the Shutter button, placing your subject in the selected focus area, halfway pressing and holding the Shutter button, then realigning the composition and firing the shutter. Alternatively, when using Single Servo AF, you can press the AF-L/AE-L button to lock focus (and exposure, unless the button is set for focus-only in the Custom Settings menu) after having initially established it by half-pressing the shutter button. Keeping this button pressed will maintain the focus and/or exposure lock, even if the Shutter button is released. This lets you recompose the photograph without having to keep your finger on the Shutter button, but rather on the AE-L/AF-L button instead. (Reducing the chance that you'll accidentally trip the shutter when you don't intend to.)

There are several options available for the AE-L/AF-L button, which can be set via the Custom Settings Menu. You can program it to lock either focus or exposure separately, or both together (the default). You can also change its operation so a single press locks and holds the exposure setting. (No need to keep the button held down.) Finally, you can set the AE/AF lock button so it alone controls the autofocus system, meaning the autofocus won't actuate when the Shutter button is half-pressed, only when the AE/AF lock button is pressed instead.

If you're a novice user considering purchasing a Nikon D60, and all this focus/exposure lock mumbo-jumbo sounds confusing, don't let it worry you; the camera's default operation is very straightforward, but the availability of features like these is really liberating for more advanced users.

AF Assist

Like past Nikon SLRs, the D60's AF-assist light is a bright incandescent bulb that emits from the body near the handgrip. We thought to call particular attention to it, because some competing cameras (notably the Canon Digital Rebel and Sony Alpha series) use the flash as an AF-assist light. This would be fine, but they also require that the flash be used in the exposure, so there's no way to have AF assist for available-light shots. The D60 doesn't have this limitation.

Nikon D60 Anti-Dust Technology

The Nikon D60 includes a two-pronged approach to fighting dust. The dust reduction system previously seen on the D300 digital SLR has been adopted for the D60, where the optical low pass filter over the sensor is vibrated to shake off dust. Nikon has coupled this with what it is calling the "Airflow Control System". In essence, the camera's internals have been designed so as to control the flow of air - along with the dust the air is carrying - when the shutter is triggered, channelling dust particles away from the sensor.

Despite the new dust cleaning features, we haven't seen an automatic system yet that's capable of removing all dust. So while this is a nice feature to have, don't be fooled into thinking that you won't have to either learn how to clean your sensor or send the camera in for cleaning.

Everyone understands that lenses sometimes get dust on them and need to be cleaned, and there are a lot of lens-cleaning cloths, solutions and other accessories on the market that work well. BUT, what do you do when your sensor gets dusty? Dust specks on the sensor tend to show up when shooting at very small apertures, appearing as dark blobs on your images. They're distracting at best, a terrible nuisance at worst, if you end up having to retouch every image to rid of them.

Most of us are naturally leery about the idea of poking around inside the delicate innards of our DSLRs to wrestle with recalcitrant dust specks. Gently blowing the sensor surface (actually, the surface of the anti-aliasing filter) with compressed air gets rid of some dust, but there's invariably a lot that just stays stuck, no matter what. So what do you do?

If you've got dust specks on your sensor (and sooner or later you will), you're going to need to clean it. There are a lot of products out there intended to address this need, but a distressing number of them work poorly (if at all), and many are grossly overpriced. Advertising hype is rampant, with bogus pseudo-scientific jargon and absurd product claims run rampant. And prices - Did I mention prices? How about $100 for a simple synthetic-bristle brush?

So how do you know what product to use?

We don't pretend to have used everything currently on the market, but can tell you about one solution that worked very well for us. The "Copper Hill" cleaning method is straightforward and safe, and in our routine usage here at Imaging Resource, highly effective. Better yet, the products sold by Copper Hill Imaging are very reasonably priced. Best of all, Nicholas R (proprietor of Copper Hill) has put together an amazingly detailed tutorial on sensor cleaning, free for all.

Sensor cleaning is one of the last things people think about when buying a d-SLR, but it's vital to capturing the best possible images. Take our advice and order a cleaning kit from Copper Hill right along with your d-SLR, so you'll have it close at hand when you need it: You'll be glad you did!

(While they've advertised on our sister site SLRgear.com from time to time, we receive no promotional consideration from Copper Hill for this note. We just think their sensor cleaning products are among the best on the market, and like their way of doing business. - We think you will too. Check them out.)

Kit Lens Test Results

Zoom
Pretty good performance with the 18-55mm VR (Vibration Reduction) kit lens.

The Nikon D60 comes with an 18-55mm VR kit lens, which is a fairly average optical zoom range of ~3x for a kit lens. Details are reasonably sharp across the frame at full wide-angle, with low levels of coma distortion but some noticeable chromatic aberration and slight blurring in the extreme corners. Results at full telephoto are also quite good, though again, some blurring is noticeable in the corners of the frame, especially on the left-hand side. Overall performance is probably a bit above average for a kit lens.

Macro
A small area (for an SLR kit lens), with slightly soft details. Flash throttles down well.

As with zoom performance, the Nikon D60's macro performance will depend entirely on the lens in use. However, with the 18-55mm VR kit lens set to 55mm, the D60 captured a small (for a non-macro SLR lens) minimum area measuring measuring 2.81 x 1.88 inches (72 x 48 millimeters). Details were a bit soft throughout the frame. There was also some additional softening in the corners from the lens. (Most lenses have some softening in the corners at macro distances.) The D60's flash throttled down for the macro area pretty well, resulting in a good exposure. Bottom line, a very credible macro performance for an inexpensive kit lens.

Distortion
Moderate barrel distortion with the 18-55mm VR kit lens, though low pincushion.

Barrel distortion at 18mm is 0.8 percent

Pincushion at 55mm is less than 0.1 percent

The Nikon D60's 18-55mm VR kit lens produced about 0.8 percent barrel distortion at wide-angle, which is about average among the cameras we've tested, and noticeable in its images. At the telephoto end, the less than 0.1 percent pincushion distortion is quite low and not nearly as noticeable. This is the tendency for the lens to bend straight lines outward (like a barrel -- usually at wide-angle) or inward (like a pincushion -- usually at telephoto).

Chromatic aberration
Moderate and bright at wide-angle, but low at telephoto with the 18-55mm VR kit lens.

Chromatic aberration in the corners with the Nikon D60's kit lens is pretty evident (we'd call it on the high side of "moderate," or "noticeable") at the 18mm setting. It's less distinguished by its width (6-8 pixels) and more by its brightness. At 55mm telephoto, this distortion is much lower and hardly noticeable. (This distortion is visible as a slight colored fringe around the objects at the edges of the field of view on the resolution target.)

Corner Sharpness
Some blurring in the corners of the frame at both zoom settings with the kit lens.

The Nikon D60's 18-55mm VR kit lens produced soft corners in a few shots. At wide angle, corners were a bit soft, with the right-hand side being softer than the left. Sharpness improves fairly rapidly as you look toward the center of the frame though, so this isn't a particularly significant shortcoming. At telephoto, corners showed less blurring, this time with the left side being the softest, while the center was still fairly sharp. Not a bad performance for a kit lens.

The images above were taken from our standardized test shots. For a collection of more pictorial photos, see our Nikon D60 Photo Gallery .

Exposure

Nikon D60 Exposure

The Nikon D60 gives you all the exposure options you'd expect in a high-end prosumer SLR. Available exposure modes include Full Auto, Program AE, Manual, Aperture Priority, and Shutter Priority modes with shutter speeds from 1/4,000 to 30 seconds available in 1/3 EV steps, as well as a Bulb setting for longer exposures. Also provided are 6 scene modes (Portrait, Landscape, Child, Sports, Macro and Night Portrait), plus a Flash-Off Auto mode. See the Modes and Menus tab for more details on each exposure mode.

The D60's x-sync speed for flash use is 1/200 second, the same as the D40x, but down from the D40's 1/500 flash sync speed. What's up? It turns out that the D40, like the D70, D70s, and D50 before it, had a relatively slow mechanical shutter, but "gated" the CCD for its shortest shutter speeds. This means that the CCD itself is actually exposed to incoming light for a longer period of time (perhaps 1/100 - 1/200 second), but the camera manipulates the chip's control voltages to only allow light collection for a much shorter period of time. This makes it easy to produce very brief exposures without the expense of a really high-speed mechanical shutter, and as a consequence also permits very high x-sync speeds. The downside is that large light overloads can cause streaking or smearing in its images. See our discussion of "Shutter Control vs CCD Gating" in our D80 review for more detail on this topic.

The good news is that the D60 won't have that problem, unlike the D40; but the x-sync speed is slower as a result.

A very nice touch that's common to other Nikon DSLRs is that, while in Program AE mode, you can rotate the Command dial to select different combinations of aperture and shutter speed settings than those normally chosen by the autoexposure system. (That is, if the automatic program would have chosen 1/125 second and f/5.6, you could instead direct the camera to use 1/60 at f/8 or 1/30 at f/11, to get greater depth of field.) This is a very handy option for those times when you need some measure of increased control, but still want the camera to do most of the work for you.

An interesting feature when using Manual exposure mode is the electronic analog exposure display visible in the optical viewfinder data readout. This shows the amount the camera thinks an image will be over- or underexposed, based on the settings you have selected, and helps you find the best exposure for the subject.

ISO Range
ISO sensitivity ranges from 100 to 3,200, adjustable through the Shooting display, or via the Shooting menu itself. Scrolling past the 1,600 setting offers a HI-1 setting, which is one full EV step above 1,600, equating to a value of 3,200. Auto ISO lets the camera adjust the ISO automatically, up to a maximum of 1,600. The No Flash scene mode also auto-adjusts the ISO up to 1,600.

White Balance Options
White balance modes on the Nikon D60 include Auto (usable from 3,500K to 8,000K), Incandescent (set to about 3,000K), 7 Fluorescent settings (consisting of Sodium-vapor lamps (2,700K), Warm-white (3,000K), White (3,700K), Cool-white (4,200K), Day white (5,000K), Daylight (6,500K) and Mercury-vapor lamps (7,200K)), Direct Sunlight (5,200K), Flash (5,400K), Cloudy (6,000K), Shade (8,000K), and Preset (which allows you to manually adjust the white value by using a white card or object as a reference point). All white balance settings are adjustable on a 2-dimensional Blue-Amber / Green-Magenta coordinate grid by use of the Multi-Selector arrows when you're in the White Balance menu screens (with the exception of the Preset option, which is not adjustable). Each of the +- 6 horizontal (yellow-blue) steps on the fine-tuning grid corresponds to 5 mired of color shift, while the +/- 6 vertical (magenta/green) steps correspond to arbitrary gradation of CC (Color Correcting) filters.

Nikon D60 Metering Options

The D60 has three metering options: 3D Color Matrix II, Center-Weighted, and Spot. The 3D Color Matrix II setting integrates exposure information from a large number of areas across the frame (useful when brightly colored or very dark subjects occupy a significant portion of the frame) with distance information from the microchip in D- and G-series lenses. The result is much more accurate metering response than more conventional center-weighted metering would provide. Like the D80, the D60 uses a 420-segment RGB metering sensor for its 3D Color Matrix II metering (vs the 1,005-segment one in the D200, D300 and D3), but does still use the same 30,000-image database for judging exposure. Center-Weighted metering measures light from the entire frame but places the greatest emphasis (75%) on a circular area 8mm in diameter, corresponding to a bit less than 7% of the total frame area. Spot metering takes a reading from a 3.5mm circle centered on the active focus area only. The D60's spot metering sensor measures from a circle covering 2.5% of the frame.

The D60's Exposure Compensation adjustment increases or reduces the overall exposure from -5 to +5 exposure equivalents (EV) in one-third step increments, in all exposure modes.

When reviewing images on the LCD monitor, you can call up a histogram and a highlight function to give you a complete readout on the exposure. This is a useful tool to examine your exposure in the camera instead of waiting to download images and then deciding to reshoot. One change from the D80 though is that the D60 only shows a luminance (brightness) histogram in playback mode, not separate red, green, and blue histograms. You can however view RGB-L histograms of captured image in a round-about way, from the D60's Retouch menu.

Nikon D60 Continuous Shooting & Self-Timer Modes

The Nikon D60 offers a single continuous shooting mode, accessed via the Drive Mode option on the Shooting display and Shooting menu screens. Only a single continuous drive mode is offered (vs the separate low and high-speed modes on the D200 and D300), with a frame rate of 3 frames/second. This matches the performance of the D40x, though the burst length has increased from about 7 large/fine JPEGs to over 20 for the D60. The D60 also sports the obligatory self-timer mode, with delay options of 2, 5, 10, and 20 seconds. There are also delayed (2 second), and immediate remote control single frame release modes.

No Automatic Exposure Bracketing?

Bracketing is the practice of taking shots above or below the indicated exposure for a given subject, a way to make sure that you get at least one properly-exposed image of difficult subjects. Most digital cameras these days offer some sort of automatic exposure bracketing, and all prior Nikon DSLRs did as well. We were thus rather surprised to find no option for bracketing on the D60. In our own shooting, we find ourselves using the auto-bracketing feature quite frequently. While it does give you three times as many shots to deal with on the computer later, it's a great hedge against lost detail due to blown exposures on tricky subjects. We recognize that Nikon was aiming for dead-simple usage on the D60, but auto exposure bracketing is a feature we think even relatively novice shooters could use and benefit from.

Nikon D60 "Image Optimization" Options

The Nikon D60 also offers the by-now-familiar Optimize Image menu, accessed through the Shooting menu, which lets you choose various presets for Normal, Softer, Vivid, and More vivid colors, special color and sharpness settings for portraits, plus an option for snapping black-and-white images.

The custom option lets you adjust sharpening, contrast (tone compensation), color mode (normal or vivid modes in sRGB color space, or Adobe RGB for people working in color-managed computer environments), color saturation, and overall color hue. All of these go quite a bit beyond the capabilities you'd normally expect to find in an entry-level DSLR.

One area where the D60 is more limited than the D80 is in its black-and-white shooting mode. The D80 lets you apply color filters when shooting in black and white mode, mimicking the effect of color contrast-enhancing filters on a black-and-white film camera. The D60 offers only a single color-to-monochrome rendering.

The images above were taken from our standardized test shots. For a collection of more pictorial photos, see our Nikon D60 Photo Gallery .

Not sure which camera to buy? Let your eyes be the ultimate judge! Visit our Comparometer(tm) to compare images from the Nikon D60 with those from other cameras you may be considering. The proof is in the pictures, so let your own eyes decide which you like best!

Performance

Nikon D60 Performance

Imaging

Nikon D60 Imaging

Color

Saturation & Hue Accuracy
Vibrant color with moderate oversaturation of strong reds, blues and some greens.

In the diagram above, the squares show the original color, and the circles show the color that the camera captured. More saturated colors are located toward the periphery of the graph. Hue changes as you travel around the center. Thus, hue-accurate, highly saturated colors appear as lines radiating from the center.

Saturation. The Nikon D60 pushes reds, blues and some greens by quite a bit, but actually undersaturates bright yellows and some greens slightly. Thus, color saturation is a but more saturated than most SLRs, but similar to the previous D40x model. Most consumer digital cameras produce color that's more highly saturated (more intense) than found in the original subjects. This is simply because most people like their color a bit brighter than life.

Skin tones. Caucasian skin tones from the D60 lean toward the bright side, a bit more pinkish than in real life. Some users would call this "a healthy glow", others may find it a little ruddy. We found them acceptable, but generally prefer the somewhat more natural tones of the D40. Where oversaturation is most problematic is on Caucasian skin tones, as it's very easy for these "memory colors" to be seen as too bright, too pink, too yellow, etc.

Hue. The Nikon D60 showed a few small color shifts relative to the correct mathematical translation of colors in its subjects, but had pretty good accuracy overall. Most noticeable was a shift in reds toward orange, oranges toward yellow, and yellow (slightly) toward green. Cyans shift quite a bit towards blues, something we see in most cameras we test. (We've speculated that this might be a trick to enhance the appearance of blue skies.) Hue is "what color" the color is.

Saturation Adjustment
The Nikon D60 has a total of just three saturation settings available, one above and one below the default saturation. They cover a fairly wide range of saturation levels, about as wide a range as you're likely to find photographically relevant, apart from special effects that are arguably better achieved in software. One of our few quibbles with the D60 is that we'd like to see more, finer steps of saturation adjustment, to permit finer-grained adjustment over approximately the same range. (We might argue for a slight extension of the range too, in the lower-saturation direction.)

Saturation Adjustment Examples
-2	0	+2

The table above shows results with the default as well as the two extreme saturation settings. Click on any thumbnail above, then click again to see the full-sized image.

Sensor

Exposure and White Balance

Indoors, incandescent lighting
Good color with the Manual white balance setting, though warm results with Auto and Incandescent. About average positive exposure compensation required.

Indoors, under normal incandescent lighting, color balance was very warm with the Auto white balance setting. (We'd say unacceptably so.) The Incandescent setting was better, but also a bit on the warm side. The Manual setting produced the most accurate results. In the end, the Incandescent setting was just slightly too warm for our tastes, but some users may prefer this, as being more representative of the original lighting. The Nikon D60 required an average amount of positive exposure compensation here, at +1.0 EV. Despite the (very) slight warm cast, overall color with the Manual white balance setting looks quite good, though the blue flowers appear very purple. (Many digital cameras reproduce these flowers with a dark, purplish tint, so the Nikon D60 actually performs a little better than average here.) Our test lighting for this shot is a mixture of 60 and 100 watt household incandescent bulbs, a pretty yellow light source, but a very common one in typical home settings here in the U.S.

Outdoors, daylight
Bright colors overall, though a tendency toward a warm cast and high contrast under harsh lighting. Slightly better than average exposure accuracy.

Outdoors, the Nikon D60 tended toward a warmer color balance, though overall color was generally pretty good. The D60 performed a bit better than average in terms of exposure, requiring slightly less than the typical amount of positive compensation we're accustomed to seeing among consumer digital cameras. (And the far-field shot of the house came out a little overexposed at the D60's default exposure setting.) The D60's default contrast is a little high, producing washed-out highlights and dark shadows under the deliberately harsh lighting of our "Sunlit" portrait test shown above left. The camera's contrast and D-Lighting settings do help tame the highlights and shadows though.

See full set of test images with explanations
See thumbnails of all test and gallery images

Resolution
Very high resolution, 1,550 ~ 1,600 lines of strong detail from in-camera JPEG, a little better from processed RAW file.

Our laboratory resolution chart revealed sharp, distinct line patterns down to about 1,550 lines per picture height horizontally, and about 1,600 lines in the vertical direction. Extinction didn't really occur, though lines began to merge around 2,000 lines. When processing the D60's NEF files using Adobe Camera Raw, we were able to extract a bit more resolution, about 1,800 lines in the horizontal direction, and about 1,700 lines in the vertical. Use these numbers to compare with other cameras of similar resolution, or use them to see just what higher resolution can mean in terms of potential detail.

See full set of test images with explanations
See thumbnails of all test and gallery images

Sharpness & Detail
Sharp images overall, though slight edge-enhancement artifacts on high-contrast subjects. Some noise suppression visible in the shadows.

Sharpness. The Nikon D60 captures fairly sharp images overall, though some minor edge enhancement artifacts are visible on high-contrast subjects such as the crop above left, and its images can be enhanced slightly by unsharp masking in Photoshop or other image-editing programs. Edge enhancement creates the illusion of sharpness by enhancing colors and tones right at the edge of a rapid transition in color or tone.

Detail. The crop above right shows some noise suppression in the darkest areas of Marti's hair, though quite a few individual strands are visible in the lighter shadows. The camera's overall response here is noticeably better than average. Noise-suppression systems in digital cameras tend to flatten-out detail in areas of subtle contrast. The effects can often be seen in shots of human hair, where the individual strands are lost and an almost "watercolor" look appears.

RAW vs In-Camera JPEGs
As noted above, the Nikon D60 does a pretty good job at balancing between sharpness and visible sharpening artifacts in camera JPEGs. A little more detail can be obtained from carefully processing RAW files though, without additional artifacts. Take a look below, to see what we mean:

Camera JPEG (Fine)	RAW via Capture NX	RAW via ACR

In the table above, mousing over a link at the bottom will load the corresponding crop in the area above. Examples include in-camera Fine JPEG, RAW file processed through Nikon's Capture NX software, and RAW file processed through Adobe Camera Raw version 4.4.1, then sharpened in Photoshop. For the Nikon D60's images, I found best results with 250% unsharp masking with an 0.3 pixel radius.

Note: ACR renders colors somewhat differently than either the D60 or the Nikon software, so the greens in the trees are rather different. There's no mistaking the increase in detail though, regardless of changes in color or tone.

ISO & Noise Performance
Low noise at the normal sensitivity settings, with good results even at ISO 800. Big jumps in noise at the highest settings, but still very competitive, and results usable for surprisingly high-quality 8x10" prints.

ISO 100	ISO 200
ISO 400 Noise Reduction Off	ISO 400 Noise Reduction On
ISO 800 Noise Reduction Off	ISO 800 Noise Reduction On
ISO 1,600 Noise Reduction Off (Minimal)	ISO 1,600 Noise Reduction On
ISO 3,200 Noise Reduction Off (Minimal)	ISO 3,200 Noise Reduction On

The Nikon D60 produced low noise at its lower sensitivity settings of ISO 100 and 200. The D60's high ISO noise reduction doesn't come into play at ISO 400, so no difference to the small amount of noise visible there with it On or Off. Noise is still quite low at ISO 800 with NR Off, but we do see a slight reduction in noise with NR turned On, with very little loss in subtle detail normally associated with NR. As you'd expect, noise is higher at ISO 1,600, but still quite reasonable, and Nikon's NR does a pretty good job at reducing it without trading away too much detail. Noise levels are much higher at ISO 3,200, but even here detail is arguably pretty good for this level of sensitivity with a 10 megapixel sensor. Note that even with NR set to Off, the D60 still performs "minimal" noise reduction at 1,600 and 3,200, which we for the most part preferred to the more aggressive NR with the On setting. See the Print Quality section below, to find out what the recommended maximum size print is at each ISO setting.

Extremes: Sunlit and low light tests
High resolution with strong overall detail, but high contrast with strong highlights. Excellent low-light performance, great exposure to the lowest limits of our test, and the autofocus worked that low as well, even without the AF-assist light.

Sunlight:
The Nikon D60 produced high contrast with slightly washed-out highlights and deep shadows under the harsh lighting of the test above. However, shadow detail is pretty good, despite some minor image noise. It's a bit of a toss-up here between the results at +0.3 and +0.7 EV. Some areas look a little hot at +0.7 EV, although many consumer-level users would doubtless prefer the brighter skin tones of that version. Skin tones in the image shot at +0.3 EV are a little dark, but the highlights are much better, with only the strongest of them being blown out. We'll "call" this as best at +0.7 EV, but recognize that some readers might prefer the versions a third-stop on either side of it. Be sure to use fill flash in situations like the one shown above; it's better to shoot in the shade when possible.

Because digital cameras are more like slide film than negative film (in that they tend to have a more limited tonal range), we test them in the harshest situations to see how they handle scenes with bright highlights and dark shadows, as well as what kind of sensitivity they have in low light. The shot above is designed to mimic the very harsh, contrasty effect of direct noonday sunlight, a very tough challenge for most digital cameras. (You can read details of this test here.)

Contrast Adjustment
We really like it when a camera gives us the ability to adjust contrast and saturation to our liking. It's even better when those adjustments cover a useful range, in steps small enough to allow for precise tweaks. Just as with its saturation adjustment, the Nikon D60's contrast setting meets both challenges.

Minimum Contrast
Contrast set to lowest, +0.7 EV	Contrast set to lowest, Auto Exposure

At its lowest contrast setting, the D60 did an excellent job of preserving highlight detail, maintaining fairly natural-looking (if slightly pink) skin tones, and holding nice detail in the shadows. The D60 captures good color outdoors, though again, just slightly on the warm side. Overall, very good results here, especially when the contrast setting is tweaked.

Contrast Adjustment Examples
-2	-1	0	+1	+2

The series of shots above shows results with different contrast adjustment settings. While you can see the extremes, it's hard to really evaluate contrast on small thumbnails like these, click on any thumbnail to go to the full-size image. The Nikon D60's contrast adjustment worked well, with little effect on color saturation. Contrast and saturation are actually fairly closely coupled, it's a good trick to be able to vary one with out the other changing as well. Nikon did a good job here.

Active D-lighting Examples
Off (default)	On
Highlight Retention
Shadow Detail

Nikon's Active D-Lighting

The two shots above show the results with Active D-Lighting Off and On (the D60 only has these two settings). This is different than the touch-up menu's D-Lighting, as it is performed during image capture instead of after. (It does affect only JPEG images though, Nikon very properly leaves RAW file data strictly as it comes from the sensor.) The shots were shot in rapid succession, but you'll notice that minor movements by Marti mean that the shots aren't absolutely identical. As you can see from the crops, fewer highlights in the flowers are clipped, while shadow detail is simultaneously improved when Active D-Lighting is enabled.

The effect of Active D-Lighting will vary quite a bit with the subject and lighting: The camera decides what needs adjusting, and by how much, so the effect can be quite a bit greater or lesser depending on what the camera sees. We almost always found ourselves pleased with the changes Active D-Lighting made, the main trade-off to using it being the longer time it takes the camera to process each photo.

	1 fc 11 lux	1/2 fc 5.5 lux	1/4 fc 2.7 lux	1/8 fc 1.3 lux	1/16 fc 0.67 lux	1/16fc No NR
ISO 100	2.2 sec f2.8	5 sec f2.8	10 sec f2.8	20 sec f2.8	30 sec f2.8	30 sec f2.8
ISO 200	1.1 sec f2.8	2.5 sec f2.8	6 sec f2.8	13 sec f2.8	20 sec f2.8	20 sec f2.8
ISO 400	0.6 sec f2.8	1.3 sec f2.8	3 sec f2.8	6 sec f2.8	13 sec f2.8	10 sec f2.8
ISO 800	0.3 sec f2.8	0.6 sec f2.8	1.5 sec f2.8	3 sec f2.8	5 sec f2.8	5 sec f2.8
ISO 1600	1/6 sec f2.8	0.3 sec f2.8	0.8 sec f2.8	1.5 sec f2.8	2.5 sec f2.8	2.5 sec f2.8
ISO 3200	1/13 sec f2.8	1/6 sec f2.8	0.3 sec f2.8	0.6 sec f2.8	1.5 sec f2.8	1.5 sec f2.8

Low light. The Nikon D60 performed very well on the low-light test, capturing usable images at the lowest light level (1/16 foot-candle) with the lowest sensitivity setting (ISO 100). Noise increases as ISO goes up and light levels go down, but remains fairly low, even at higher sensitivities. There are no signs of banding or hot pixels, even when NR is set to Off. Color balance looked good with the Auto white balance setting, and the camera's autofocus system was able to focus on the subject down to below the 1/16 foot-candle light level unassisted, and in complete darkness with the AF assist enabled. Keep in mind that the longer shutter speeds here demand the use of a tripod to prevent any blurring from camera movement. (A useful trick is to just prop the camera on a convenient surface, and use its self-timer to release the shutter. This avoids any jiggling from your finger pressing the shutter button, and can work quite well when you don't have a tripod handy.)

How bright is this? The one foot-candle light level that this test begins at roughly corresponds to the brightness of typical city street-lighting at night. Cameras performing well at that level should be able to snap good-looking photos of street-lit scenes.

NOTE: This low light test is conducted with a stationary subject, and the camera mounted on a sturdy tripod. Most digital cameras will fail miserably when faced with a moving subject in dim lighting. (For example, a child's ballet recital or a holiday pageant in a gymnasium.) Digital SLRs like the Nikon D60 do much better than point & shoots, but you still shouldn't expect a quick autofocus lock with moving subjects.

Output Quality

Print Quality
Great print quality, good color, sharp 13 x 19-inch prints.

The Nikon D60's printed output is really impressive, able to output usable 16 x 20-inch prints at ISO 100. At that size, they were slightly soft, but really quite good. 13x19-inch prints were a little better, though. ISO 200 shots printed the same as 100, producing a good 16x20 or great 13x19. ISO 400 images do just fine at 13x19, and of course are better 11x14, but not by much. ISO 800 shots were also quite good at 11x14, as we didn't see the small circular noise suppression artifacts we saw with the D40x in dark objects. ISO 1,600 shots are usable at 11x14, even with the noise reduction turned off, and with it on are quite good. ISO 3,200 shots need to step down to 5x7 or so, but at that size they're great. Turning off noise suppression at 3,200 is not a good idea, as it still produces a lot of chroma noise even at 4x6. Detail at this size is still quite impressive. It's a very good performance from the Nikon D60, quite a nice surprise.

Testing hundreds of digital cameras, we've found that you can only tell just so much about a camera's image quality by viewing its images on-screen. Ultimately, there's no substitute for printing a lot of images and examining them closely. For this reason, we now routinely print sample images from the cameras we test on our Canon Pro9000 studio printer, and on the Canon iP5200 here in the office. (See the Canon PIXMA Pro9000 review for details on that model.)

Viewfinder

Nikon D60 Viewfinder

The Nikon D60's viewfinder is an optical through-the-lens type, with the LCD monitor being used for image playback and menu access only. (That is, there's no live image preview available.) A pair of horizontal infrared sensors just below the viewfinder, which we've highlighted with a green rectangle in the image at right, detect your eye as it approaches the viewfinder, turning the internal viewfinder display on and deactivating the LCD shooting information display if you have the Shooting Info Auto Off option enabled. This reduces annoying glare from the LCD, and increases battery life. We've seen similar eye-detect systems on other brands before, but this is a welcome first for Nikon.

Nikon says D60's viewfinder provides a magnification of 0.8x and a coverage of about 95% (coverage was actually a little higher than that in our tests). The D60's dioptric correction adjustment (for eyeglass wearers) has a range from -1.7 to +0.5 diopter. Some of us had a hard time reaching the dioptric adjustment, a slider on the right side of the viewfinder eyepiece housing. Those of us with fingernails on our thumbs found that they worked quite well as dioptric actuators though. :-) The viewfinder has an eyepoint height of 18mm at -1 diopter. This is enough that most eyeglass wearers should be able to see the full viewfinder area without having to mash their glasses against the viewfinder bezel. The D60's viewfinder is a pentamirror design, rather than the more costly, but brighter pentaprism.

The viewfinder is actually one of the bigger distinguishing features between the D60 and D80: The D80 uses a pentaprism design, has a magnification factor of 0.94x, a higher eyepoint of 19.5mm, and a diopter adjustment range of -2.0 to +1.0. While the D60's viewfinder is every bit as capable as those on many competing DSLRs, the D80 clearly wins on size, brightness, comfort, and flexibility.

The Nikon D60's viewfinder readouts do a good job of communicating camera status and exposure settings: They're a slightly trimmed-down list of information from that found on the D80, making for a simple and relatively uncluttered display. The readout display is identical to that of the D40x, except Nikon has added a very nice focusing rangefinder readout using the analog scale, to assist in more accurately focusing lenses that do not autofocus on the D60. (As mentioned in the Optics section, the D60 will not autofocus with lenses that do not have a built-in focus motor.) Off by default, you can turn on the focusing rangefinder display via custom settings menu option 19. Because it uses the camera's AF sensor, the rangefinder will only work with lenses having a maximum aperture of f/5.6 or wider.

Viewfinder Test Results

Accuracy
Good accuracy from the optical viewfinder.

The Nikon D60's optical viewfinder proved quite accurate, showing about 98% coverage at wide angle, and about 97% coverage at telephoto zoom settings. This is above average coverage for a consumer digital SLR, especially an entry-level model, though there is a slight tilt and vertical offset with respect to the imaging sensor.

Nikon D60 LCD Display

As is the case with other entry-level Nikon digital SLRs, the LCD panel on the D60 can't be used as a viewfinder. It does, however, provide a great deal of information about your pictures after you've shot them. A variety of playback options are offered, including image-only, four flavors of overlaid information, a 4- or 9-image thumbnail display, and a zoomed playback mode with variable information. The screenshots below show several of the information displays that are available.

Playback Information Screens
The default playback-mode information screen. Folder & file names, date/time, image sequence number, and image size/quality.	The first of three more detailed information overlays.
The second detailed information overlay screen.	The third detailed information overlay screen.
Highlight clipping warning display. (Blown highlights blink white/black.)	Luminance histogram overlay.

Of the various screens, one of the more interesting options on the Nikon D60 is the histogram screen. Histogram displays are common on professional digital cameras (and many amateur models now as well), regarded as almost mandatory by many pros for evaluating exposure levels. A histogram is simply a graph of how many pixels there are in the image at each brightness level. The brightness is the horizontal axis, running from black at the left to white at the right. The height of the graph shows the relative number of pixels having each brightness level. This sort of display is very handy for determining under- or overexposure. Ideally, the histogram would stretch across the entire width of the display, using the full range of brightness values available. An underexposed image will have a histogram with all the data lumped on the left-hand side, with nothing reaching all the way to the right. Likewise, an overexposed image will have all the data lumped on the right hand side.

A histogram display is very helpful in telling whether you've got the exposure right, but to my mind isn't adequate by itself. With digital cameras, it's very important not to blow-out the highlights in a picture (they're similar to color positive film in that respect), since once you hit the maximum brightness, the image just saturates, and any highlight detail will be lost. A histogram display does a pretty good job of telling you how the image as a whole is doing, but what if there are just a few critical areas that you're worried about for the highlights? If only a small percentage of the total frame is involved, it won't account for many pixels. That means any peak at the "white" end of the histogram graph would be pretty small, and easy to miss (or just plain invisible). What to do? The folks at Nikon recognized this problem some time ago, and so have provided another special display mode on the D60 (as on most of their dSLRs) that they simply call "highlights," accessible via the Playback settings menu, under "Display Mode." This mode blinks any highlights that are saturated in any of the color channels. It does this by taking the nearly-white areas on the LCD and toggling them between white and black. The shot above left shows the blown highlights blinking on an otherwise uninteresting shot.

On the D60, a luminance (brightness) graph is the only option for the histogram display in playback mode, the RGB+L histogram display option from the D80 having been dropped. We here at IR like being able to see what's going on in the individual color channels, but for the novice user the D60 is aimed at, the individual red, green, and blue histogram displays might have been more confusing than useful. One trick we learned with previous models is that an RGB histogram can be accessed in the Retouch Filter Effects menu, as seen in the screen shot on the right.

The D60 also offers the D80's excellent options for display magnification. You have the normal thumbnail or normal-sized displays available, but can also enlarge the display up to 25x (for maximum-resolution images) to examine critical focus and framing. Pressing the Magnify button enables zoomed playback, and each subsequent press of it zooms in a step closer. Pressing the "unmagnify"/Thumbnail button zooms you out. Any time you're zoomed in, you can scroll around the magnified image by using the Multi-controller. A particularly nice feature is that you can use the Command Dial to scroll between images on the memory card, at the same zoom level, and with the same relative position in each. This is especially helpful when you want to check the same detail in multiple versions of the same shot.

Flash

Nikon D60 Flash

Flash photography has been a particular strength of Nikon SLRs for some time now, and the D60 follows suit, with its implementation of Nikon's 3D Color Matrix II metering for flash exposures. This advanced exposure metering system takes advantage of subject-distance information relayed by the lens to compute more accurate flash exposures than more conventional systems based on reflected light alone.

Flash capability is also an area where the Nikon D40, D40x and D60 shed some substantial capability relative to the D80, though, in that its built-in flash can't serve as a Commander in Nikon's Wireless Lighting System. You can still use the D60 with a Nikon SB-800 flash to control multiple remote flash units, but the built-in flash doesn't have that ability on its own.

The flash modes available vary depending on the setting of the mode dial, with some of the more automated/programmed modes restricting your choices. The full list of flash modes includes Auto, Auto+Red-Eye Reduction, Auto+Slow Sync+Red-Eye Reduction, Slow Sync, Slow Sync+Red-Eye Reduction, and Rear Curtain+Slow Sync. Red-Eye Reduction mode fires the (very bright) AF-assist light before the main flash exposure, to reduce the Red-Eye Effect in shots of people. Red-Eye Reduction with Slow Sync works in a similar fashion, but combines the flash with a slower shutter speed for night portraits. (This reduces the harsh effect of nighttime flash shots, allowing more of the ambient illumination into the picture.) Slow Sync mode works with shutter speeds as slow as 30 seconds to preserve color in night shots. Finally, Rear-Curtain Sync fires the flash at the end of the exposure, producing light trails that appear to follow (rather than precede) moving subjects. A Manual flash exposure mode is available via Custom Settings Menu option 14.

Flash exposure can be set over a range of -3 to +1 EV by holding the Flash and Exposure Compensation buttons down simultaneously, while rotating the Command Dial. (Flash exposure can also be adjusted via the Shooting Display and Multi-Controller arrow keys, which some users may find more straightforward.)

As noted elsewhere in this review, the Nikon D60 has a 1/200 second maximum x-sync speed.

Another note relative to the x-sync speed on the D60: Its built-in flash is not FP-capable. Basically, this means that the on-board flash can't sync at shutter speeds greater than 1/200 second. There also doesn't appear to be any support for external flash units that are FP-capable, so it seems that 1/200 second is the fastest shutter speed you'll be able to use with the flash, regardless of mode or flash source.

Besides the main flash modes listed above, the D60's onboard speedlight can also be used in manual mode, in which you can set its power output to fixed levels of full, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, and 1/32 power. The D60's internal flash is fairly powerful, with a guide number of 12 meters or 39 feet at ISO 100 in auto mode, extending slightly to 13 meters (43 feet) in manual mode. The greater range in manual mode is because it doesn't have to expend energy on the metering pre-flash. (Novices should note that 39 feet is the guide number, not the range. Divide the guide number by your lens' aperture setting to produce the actual range in feet.)

3D Color Matrix II Flash Metering
As noted above, the "3D" aspect of the Nikon metering system is that it uses subject distance information from the lens (only available with G or D-type lenses) to guide its exposure decisions. This is particularly key with flash exposures, because flash illumination falls off quite strongly as the subject gets further from the camera. The "Color Matrix" part of the name refers to the use of a 420-segment RGB sensor for exposure determination, which significantly improves the accuracy with which the camera can determine various scene types, for lookup in its 30,000-image exposure database. We at IR are huge fans of Nikon's flash technology, it's really a case of technology working perfectly in the service of creativity. The camera just quietly does its job, so you can focus on composition, color, interacting with your subjects, etc. It doesn't remove the creative decisions of how you want to light your subject, it simply removes the technical legerdemain from the equation. It won't by any means turn a duffer into a pro photographer, but it'll certainly take an average shooter a long way in that direction.

The D60 with Nikon's Creative Lighting System
Nikon has long been a leader in flash technology, but in late 2003, they significantly upped the ante with their Creative Lighting System. This system of flashes and supporting camera bodies lets the photographer control up to three separate groups of remote flash units, with an essentially unlimited number of individual strobes in each group. The exposure and operating mode of each group of flashes can be controlled independently, and exposure is metered through the lens (TTL) for all units.

While the D60 built-in flash can't act as a controller for remote strobes, it's perfectly compatible with the system if you slip an SB-800 into its hot-shoe. The control and creative freedom Nikon's Wireless Lighting system offers is truly amazing: See our Nikon Creative Lighting System review for more info.

Flash Test Results

Coverage and Range
Good flash performance, with good coverage and intensity. About average positive exposure compensation required.

Coverage. Flash coverage was slightly uneven at wide angle, with falloff in the corners of the frame. However, at telephoto, coverage is much more even. Indoors, under incandescent background lighting, the Nikon D60's flash performed quite well, requiring about average positive exposure compensation of +1.0 EV for a bright image. With the camera's slow-sync flash mode, results are also quite bright at only +0.7 EV, though the longer shutter time results in a much stronger orange cast from the ambient background lighting.

Flash Range: Wide Angle
6 ft	7 ft	8 ft	9 ft	10 ft	11 ft
1/60 sec f3.5 ISO 100	1/60 sec f3.5 ISO 100	1/60 sec f3.5 ISO 100	1/60 sec f3.5 ISO 100	1/60 sec f3.5 ISO 100	1/60 sec f3.5 ISO 100
12 ft	13 ft	14 ft	15 ft	16 ft
1/60 sec f3.5 ISO 100	1/60 sec f3.5 ISO 100	1/60 sec f3.5 ISO 100	1/60 sec f3.5 ISO 100	1/60 sec f3.5 ISO 100

Flash Range: Telephoto
6 ft	7 ft	8 ft	9 ft	10 ft	11 ft
1/60 sec f5.6 ISO 100	1/60 sec f5.6 ISO 100	1/60 sec f5.6 ISO 100	1/60 sec f5.6 ISO 100	1/60 sec f5.6 ISO 100	1/60 sec f5.6 ISO 100
12 ft	13 ft	14 ft	15 ft	16 ft
1/60 sec f5.6 ISO 100	1/60 sec f5.6 ISO 100	1/60 sec f5.6 ISO 100	1/60 sec f5.6 ISO 100	1/60 sec f5.6 ISO 100

ISO 100 Range. The Nikon D60's flash was bright and powerful, with excellent intensity all the way to about 14 feet at ISO 100 at 18mm. At 55mm, flash intensity didn't fall until about 9 feet at 55mm.

Manufacturer-Specified Flash Range
Wide Angle	Telephoto
11.1 feet ISO 100	7.0 feet ISO 100

Manufacturer-Specified Flash Test. The Nikon D60's guide number is 12 meters in auto mode at ISO 100, which translates to about 11 feet at f/3.5 and 7 feet at f/5.6. In the shots above, the D60 seems to perform at least as well as Nikon says it will, producing good exposures at the rated distances with its ISO set to 100. (Our tests above suggest that Nikon's official rating may be a bit conservative.)

Note: Our standard test method for flash range uses a fixed setting of ISO 100, to provide a fair basis of comparison between cameras. With the above test, we're also looking at whether their stated specification rings true.

Imatest Results

Nikon D60 Imatest Results

We routinely use Norman Koren's excellent "Imatest" analysis program for quantitative, thoroughly objective analysis of digicam test images. I highly recommend it to our technically-oriented readers, as it's far and away the best, most comprehensive analysis program I've found to date.

My comments below are just brief observations of what we see in the Imatest results. A full discussion of all the data Imatest produces is really beyond the scope of this review: Visit the Imatest web site for a full discussion of what the program measures, how it performs its computations, and how to interpret its output.

Here's some of the results produced by Imatest for the Nikon D60:

sRGB Accuracy Comparison
Nikon D60	Canon XSi	Olympus E-420	Sony A200

The Nikon D60 showed pretty good color accuracy, though its average saturation is a moderately higher than that of its competition. Hue accuracy was very good, with small hue shifts occurring in many colors. Average saturation was 118% (18% oversaturated) and average "delta-C" color error was 7.28 after correction for saturation, which while not bad, isn't as good as some of the competition. (Delta-C is the same as the more commonly referred to delta-E, but delta-C takes into account only color differences, ignoring luminance variation.) Overall, a good (albeit vibrant) color response for a dSLR. Mouse over the links below the illustration above to compare results with other recent models.

Adobe RGB Accuracy Comparison
Nikon D60	Canon XSi	Olympus E-420	Sony A200

Unlike most cameras, when using the Adobe RGB color space (which provides a much wider gamut, or range of colors that can be expressed), the Nikon D60 delivers less saturated color, with an average saturation of 100.9% and average saturation-corrected hue error of 5.85 "delta-C" units. An unusually accurate result overall, although there are a few more hue shifts than we'd like to see. Again, mouse over the links below the illustration above to compare results with other recent dSLRs.

This image shows how the Nikon D60 actually rendered the colors of the MacBeth chart, compared to a numerically ideal treatment. In each color swatch, the outer perimeter shows the color as actually captured by the camera, the inner square shows the numerically ideal color, after correcting for the luminance of the photographed chart (as determined by a second-order curve fit to the values of the gray swatches), and the small rectangle inside the inner square shows the numerically ideal color, without any luminance correction. This image shows the good hue accuracy, as well as a gamma curve that's slightly shifted toward the lower end of the tonal scale. This would lead us to think that it handled strong highlights particularly well, but under contrasty lighting, we found it tended to blow them out: Apparently the behavior here (below saturation) is different from when it actually encounters a really overexposed highlight. As part of its "bright color" aesthetic, it also overexposes highly saturated colors a bit, a fairly common tactic we've seen on many consumer-oriented cameras we've tested.

There's a lot in this particular graph, as always a lot more than we have room to go into here. (This set of plots has also changed a little in the more recent versions of Imatest. Some of the plots that were shown here previously are now shown in other Imatest output. Since we largely focus on the Noise Spectrum plot, we'll only show the graphic above, which includes that plot.)

In comparing these graphs with those from competing cameras, I've found that the Noise Spectrum graph at lower right is the most important. Cameras that manage to shift their noise spectrum to higher frequencies have much finer-grained noise structures, making their noise less visually objectionable. In the graph above, this would show up as a noise spectrum curve that remained higher on the right side, representing higher noise frequencies. The champion at this was the Nikon EOS-1Ds Mark II, which produced remarkably fine-grained image noise, even at very high ISOs.

Except for the red channel, the Nikon D60 does good job of keeping the noise energy at low ISOs up at high frequencies. What little low-ISO image noise that's there is more fine-grained as a result. The red channel's noise has a large spike at very low frequencies, and in this case that actually seems to help the red channel somewhat: It's noise pattern in areas of flat tint is very soft, making it all but invisible at low ISOs. - Actually, that could be claimed for any of the noise shown here at low ISOs, it's just not evident with normal subjects at reasonable print sizes.

Here's the same set of noise data at ISO 3,200, the D60's maximum sensitivity. Here, the Noise Spectrum graph is shifted quite a bit toward the left-hand, lower-frequency side than it was at ISO 100. This indicates a coarsening of the "grain" of the image noise patterns by quite a bit, and indeed that's what we see when inspecting the D60's ISO?3,200 images. The red channel is now pretty much in-line with the others, most likely the result of Nikon's default high ISO noise reduction. (Even with the default NR setting of Off (the default in the shooting menu), the D60 still performs some noise reduction at ISOs above 800.)

This chart compares the Nikon D60's noise performance over a range of ISOs against that of other cameras. While I continue to show noise plots of this sort because readers ask for them, I each time point out that the noise magnitude is only a small part of the story, the grain pattern being much more important. Here, we can see that the Nikon D60's luminance noise starts out at similar levels compared to the competition, and increases at a fairly constant rate as ISO climes to 1,600, where it ends up close to the level of the Canon XSi, and slightly higher than most of the other competition. Noise magnitude increases at a higher rate to ISO 3,200 where it is much higher than the Sony A200, the only other camera in this group capable of ISO 3,200. Do keep in mind these measurements are taken with each camera set at default settings, so the shape or position of the curve could be influenced by the settings you choose to use. The Pentax K200D's plot is a good example of this. Its noise magnitude is higher than the others, but that's partly because the K200D's default contrast and sharpness settings are a bit on the high side.

One difference between the D60 and D40x is that the D60's noise reduction setting defaults to Off rather than On. The main noise plot above shows the results from the default (Off) setting. The graph immediately above shows what happens when you turn the Noise Reduction option On: the D60 more closely mimics the behavior of the D40x, but its noise levels are still a little bit higher at ISO 3,200.

Nikon D60 Dynamic Range Analysis

A key parameter in a digital camera is its Dynamic Range, the range of brightness that can be faithfully recorded. At the upper end of the tonal scale, dynamic range is dictated by the point at which the RGB data "saturates" at values of 255, 255, 255. At the lower end of the tonal scale, dynamic range is determined by the point at which there ceases to be any useful difference between adjacent tonal steps. Note the use of the qualifier "useful" in there: While it's tempting to evaluate dynamic range as the maximum number of tonal steps that can be discerned at all, that measure of dynamic range has very little relevance to real-world photography. What we care about as photographers is how much detail we can pull out of the shadows before image noise becomes too objectionable. This, of course, is a very subjective matter, and will vary with the application and even the subject matter in question. (Noise will be much more visible in subjects with large areas of flat tints and subtle shading than it would in subjects with strong, highly contrasting surface texture.)

What makes most sense then, is to specify useful dynamic range in terms of the point at which image noise reaches some agreed-upon threshold. To this end, Imatest computes a number of different dynamic range measurements, based on a variety of image noise thresholds. The noise thresholds are specified in terms of f-stops of equivalent luminance variation in the final image file, and dynamic range is computed for noise thresholds of 1.0 (low image quality), 0.5 (medium image quality), 0.25 (medium-high image quality) and 0.1 (high image quality). For most photographers and most applications, the noise thresholds of 0.5 and 0.25 f-stops are probably the most relevant to the production of acceptable-quality finished images, but many noise-sensitive shooters will insist on the 0.1 f-stop limit for their most critical work.

The image below shows the test results from Imatest for an in-camera JPEG file from the Nikon D60 with a nominally-exposed density step target (Stouffer 4110), and the D60's contrast and D-Lighting settings at their default positions.

While not quite as good as the D40x it replaces, these are still better than average numbers compared to current-model dSLRs. We ran the same test with Active D-Lighting enabled, but found that while overall dynamic range increased to 11.2 EV, dynamic range at the highest quality level actually fell slightly to 7.46 EV, probably due to increased shadow noise from a boost in local exposure levels.

Processing the Nikon D60's RAW (.NEF) files through Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) version 4.4.1 increased total dynamic range by over one f-stop from 10.8 to 11.9, and increased dynamic range by about 2/3 stop at the highest quality level, compared to the in-camera JPEG with Active D-Lighting off. These results were obtained by using ACR's automatic settings; slightly better results may be possible by adjusting the sliders manually. It's also worth noting here is that ACR's default noise reduction settings reduced the overall red- and blue- channel noise somewhat (see the plot in the lower left-hand corner) relative to the levels in the in-camera JPEG. ACR also shifted slightly more of the noise energy into high spatial frequencies, making its residual noise even less objectionable than that found in the camera JPEGs.

Dynamic Range, the bottom line:

The net result was that the D60 performed slightly better than average for JPEG images straight from the camera, and is near the top of the pack for dynamic range from NEFs processed through ACR. An excellent performance.

To get some perspective, here's a summary of the Nikon D60's dynamic range performance, and how it compares to other digital SLRs that we also have Imatest dynamic range data for. (Results are arranged in order of decreasing dynamic range at the "High" quality level.):

The results shown in the table are interesting. One of the first things that struck me when I initially looked at test data for a wide range of dSLRs, was that here again, purely analytical measurements don't necessarily correlate all that well with actual photographic experience. There's no question that the Fuji S3 Pro deserves its place atop the list, as its unique "SR" technology does indeed deliver a very obvious improvement in tonal range in the highlight portion of the tonal scale. On the other hand, while the Canon Rebel XSi does a good job with high-contrast subjects (thanks to its Advanced Lighting Option that's on by default), to our eyes, it doesn't compete with the S3 Pro. In the other direction, I was quite surprised to see the Nikon D2x place as low on the listings as it did, given that we found that camera's shadow detail to be little short of amazing.

One thing that's going on here though, is that we tested each camera at its lowest ISO setting, which should produce best-case noise levels. This is in fact what many photographers will be most interested in, but it does perhaps place some of the Nikons (like the D40) at a disadvantage, as their lowest ISO setting is 200, as compared to the ISO 100 settings available on most other models.

In the case of the Nikon D60, it places very well, showing higher dynamic range from its in-camera JPEGs than most cameras we've tested. In practice, we found its somewhat contrasty tone curve made it easy to lose highlights under high-contrast lighting. It appears that its excellent dynamic range comes more from its handling of deep shadows than strong highlights: Aim to underexpose slightly in high-contrast situations, and you should be pleased by the amount of tonal range the camera captures.

Nikon D60 Resolution Chart Test Results

The chart above shows consolidated results from spatial frequency response measurements in both the horizontal and vertical axes. The "MTF 50" numbers tend to correlate best with visual perceptions of sharpness, so those are what I focus on here. The uncorrected resolution figures are 1,984 line widths per picture height in the horizontal direction (corresponding to the vertically-oriented edge), and 1,782 lines along the vertical axis (corresponding to the horizontally-oriented edge), for a combined average of 1,883 LW/PH. Correcting to a "standardized" sharpening with a one-pixel radius increased both vertical and horizontal resolution by quite a bit, resulting in an average of 2,256 LW/PH. This is a very good performance for a 10-megapixel camera.

To see what's going on, refer to the plots below, which show the actual edge profiles for both horizontal and vertical edges, in both their original and corrected forms. Here, you can see that fairly conservative in-camera sharpening is applied in the horizontal direction (according to Imatest, undersharpened by 5.49%) , and even less sharpening is applied in the vertical direction (undersharpened by 7.96%). Still, for the ultimate in sharpness, dial down the camera's internal sharpening and process the resulting images after the fact in Photoshop or other image-processing application to bring out the maximum detail without introducing sharpening artifacts.

Menus

Nikon D60 Modes and Menus

The mode dial on the right side of the D60's top panel provides access to its various exposure modes, the same arrangement of Auto, three semi-auto, and one Manual as found on all Nikon DSLRs, but with a total of seven Scene modes (which Nikon calls "Vari-Programs"), just like the D40x. Here's a list of what's available:

• Auto: The camera sets everything. Used for snapshots or users who just don't want to be bothered with the details. The AF-assist light will come on if needed, and the camera selects the AF point covering the closest subject.
• Program: Puts the camera in charge of aperture and shutter speed, though all remaining camera settings are available. You can vary the combination of aperture and shutter speed the camera has selected by rotating the Command Dial.
• Shutter Priority: The user controls shutter speed, from 1/4,000 to 30 seconds, while the camera sets the aperture value.
• Aperture Priority: The opposite of Shutter Priority mode, this mode lets the user control the aperture, while the camera sets the shutter speed.
• Manual: Gives the user complete control over the exposure (both shutter and aperture settings), and provides access to the camera's Bulb shutter setting for exposures longer than 30 seconds.
• Night Portrait: Uses slow shutter speed with flash, balancing the two so that night portraits look natural even with flash. Closest-subject AF is used. Use a tripod to avoid blurring.
• Close up: Reds and greens are pumped up, camera selects center focus point, but other points can be chosen with the Multi-Selector. The built-in flash will pop up and fire if the lighting is too dim, use of a tripod is recommended.
• Sports: Uses higher shutter speeds, camera switches to continuous focus while the shutter button is held down halfway, tracking the subject in the center focus area. If the subject leaves the central AF area, the camera will follow it and judge focus from the other focus areas. The beginning AF area can be chosen with the Multi-selector. Both flash and AF illuminator are turned off and will not fire.
• Child: This mode boosts sharpness and saturation for clothing and background details, but renders skin tones soft and natural-looking. The built-in flash will pop up and fire if the lighting is too dim.
• Landscape: Boosts color saturation, contrast, and sharpening for city and forest landscape shots. Closest-focus AF is used, and the flash and AF-assist light are turned off in this mode.
• Portrait: Adjusts the lens aperture to soften background details to help the main subject stand out more clearly. Sharpness and color saturation are moderated somewhat, to give softer, more natural-looking skin tones. The built-in flash will pop up and fire if the lighting is too dim.
• Auto (Flash Off): In this mode, the flash is disabled, and the camera will vary the ISO up to a maximum of 1,600, to capture images using available light. The AF-assist light will come on if needed, and the camera selects the AF point with the closest subject. This mode is great for museums and other places where flash isn't permitted, more natural-looking indoor shots, etc. (Do note though, that you may need to use a tripod, as the shutter speeds are likely to be on the slow side, even at ISO 1,600.)

Nikon D60 Menus

The menu system on the Nikon D60 follows that of the D40x, including an expanded version of the D40x's Retouch menu.

The D60's menu system makes good use of the large, high-resolution LCD screen, with fonts that are larger and smoother than those on older models such as the D50 and D70s, with much-improved graphics. The net result is much better readability and a more sophisticated appearance. There are five main menus: Playback, Shooting, Custom Settings, Set Up, and Retouch. The Retouch menu was first introduced on the D80, and offers much more extensive options for in-camera image manipulation than we've seen from other manufacturers. Navigation takes place via the Multi Selector pad, assisted at times by the OK button. The menus themselves are chosen via a "tabbed" interface, with icons on the left of the screen corresponding to the five menus.

The Nikon D60 carries forward the extensive help system that's been a hallmark of recent Nikon models, but expands it even beyond what we saw on the D80, covering essentially all of the menu items. Whenever a menu item is selected that has a help screen associated with it, a square icon with a question mark on it appears in the lower left-hand corner of the screen. When you press the Thumbnail View / Zoom Out / Help button, the LCD screen will display help information for that current menu selection. Most help screens are just a single page, but a few extend onto multiple pages. The explanations are very informative (much better than average, we'd say), but there is still room for improvement on some of the more arcane/involved settings.

In the section below, we're taking a different approach than we have previously in presenting the D60's menu structure. Rather than list and verbally describe each option, we'll present the top-level menu screens in the main text without comment, and provide links to pages showing the entire D60 menu structure, page by page, including Nikon's informative help screens.

Nikon D60 Playback Menu

Nikon D60 full Playback menu layout
(note, large download for dialup users)

Nikon D60 Shooting Menu

Nikon D60 full Shooting menu layout
(note, large download for dialup users)

Nikon D60 Custom Settings Menu

Nikon D60 full Custom Settings menu layout
(note, large download for dialup users)

Nikon D60 Setup Menu

Nikon D60 full Setup menu layout
(note, large download for dialup users)

Nikon D60 "Retouch" Menu

Most digital cameras offer at least some degree of in-camera image modification, even if it's just or cropping. Like the D40 and D40x before it, the Nikon D60 has an entire menu devoted to in-camera "retouching." Calling it retouching may be a bit of a stretch, as retouching has to us always implied direct human interaction with an image, as in cloning-out unwanted elements, locally altering the color or tone, etc. There's no question though, that the Retouch menu on the Nikon D60 goes far beyond anything that's been seen on a mainstream digital camera before, and now includes new options such as Quick retouch, more Filter effects, in-camera RAW file conversion and Stop-motion movie generation from a sequence of stills.

Nikon D60 full Retouch menu layout
(note, large download for dialup users)

Rawindex

Digital Cameras - Nikon D60 RAW Test Images

The tables below show selected representative images from our test shot series that were shot in RAW mode.

Depending on your browser, you can download the images by clicking on the links, or by right-clicking on the links and selecting "Save Target As...", or similar. Some browsers change the file extension to .TIFF. In that case, just rename to .NEF after downloading. You can see the full set of in-camera JPEG shots, including exposure information extracted from the EXIF file headers, on the Thumbnail index page.

NOTE: These are very large files (10+ megabytes each). They're here for you to use, but please be considerate of our bandwidth; don't just download everything willy-nilly. - Thanks!

Still Life

Multi-Target

Far-Field

Comparison

Nikon D60 Feature Comparison

The chart below compares the D60 with other current Nikon cameras. We've used color tints in the cells to highlight differences between the D40, D40x, D60 and the D80. A red cell means that the the camera involved has lesser specs than the other two, a green cell that it has better, a yellow cell that its specification is in between the two others.