My experience going from A700 to Canon 60D

[bfitzgerald]

Reading the D7000 review it's got a few quirks which are not that apparent with a casual glance. Nice camera but for a camera in that class it's buffer is a bit on the small side...so even though it shoots faster than the 60d that Canon might actually be better for action shooters with a bigger buffer.

Prices are coming down nicely on the 60d though I'd stay away from the 17-85mm lens deal myself (I was unimpressed with that lens on a 40d it would be even worse on the 60d!) I wouldn't worry about the plastic myself but the lack of AF adjustment is a bit puzzling.

[peterottaway]

All the camera manufacturers would like to sell you a more expensive camera than you want to buy. Nikon doesn't want people to buy a D90/D7000 as a fully functional high end APS sensor camera if it can convert a percentage of sales into D300 sales at $1500 - $1600 rather than $1200. So these models are slightly constrained such as the the D90 having a reduced data pipe and only only cRAW rather than RAW output. No big deal for most non-pro photographers, but for a travelling pro with 3 camera bodies and needing to replace them quite often because of the rapid updating of DSLR's and the need to ensure 100% availability !

Nikon had a real winner with the D90 as it was a good size and offered a lot for the money in comparison when introduced. It encouraged many to spend the extra over something like the D5000 but it couldn't be allowed to steal sales from the D300/D700 where real money is being made.

The problem as I see it that was the end of 2008 not the beginning of 2011. With Sony introducing the A33/A55 at $650/$750 and the Canon 60D selling at about $850 - the real life cost to performance ratio is no longer in Nikons favour. Added to that is the obvious maturing of the DSLR market which means that photographers are no longer willing to pay high prices in comparison to the last generation of film cameras on a regular basis. Neither hardware nor software are actually perfect but the new Sony 16MP sensor and Lightroom 3 etc are good enough to be considered a medium to longterm proposition, rather than part of an annual replacement ritual.

Not good news for the racket Adobe has been running either.

[bfitzgerald]

I dunno it varies from each maker how they do their model line up and it's obvious to me Canon re-adjusted theirs in the same way Nikon put the D90 out at a price point which was above the rebels but below the top line D300, I think it fitted the market well at the time.

Canon didn't really have the grunt to fully compete with the D300 and models like it with their 50d so the 7d became a direct rival to that body. Hence the 60d is the new "D90 ish" model from Canon in some ways at least. Question is what Nikon do now with the D5000 which is now effectively obsolescent in the line up. A replacement would want to add quite a bit more to the mix and we could see a 60d rival from them. They'll have to get a grip on some things though AF motors missing from bodies and honestly it's ridiculous to have a model like the D5000 that does not support HSS even with dedicated flashguns.

Nikon are a bit mean in their lower priced offerings. Canon have tended to be more generous but I still think they should have AF adjustments in there. Not sure about the handling side of things v the 50d some don't seem so happy others are ok.

[bakubo]

I wouldn't worry about the plastic myself but the lack of AF adjustment is a bit puzzling.

Before buying the 60D I was disappointed that it didn't have MFA, but then people started commenting on how unusual it was that there weren't the typical bunch of posts from people complaining about FF and BF with the 60D. I linked to a long thread in an earlier post here in this thread where there is all kind of speculation about what Canon may have done to make MFA less needed than in earlier DSLRs. Don't know what, if anything, has been done, but all of my lenses focus fine so I no longer care about MFA in this body.

[bakubo]

A bit later than many other reviews, but here is a new review for the 60D that is quite good:

http://www.popphoto.com/reviews/cameras ... news011311

[bakubo]

The 60D doesn't have MFA just like the A700, A55, A580, etc. don't. When the 60D first came out I was a bit concerned about this for a new camera, but after waiting awhile and reading many reports of people who owned it and said that for whatever reason it focused much better than previous DSLRs (40D, 50D, 7D, etc.) I decided to get it. Lots of speculation about whether Canon did something to make AF just work better. Here is a recent post that illustrates this:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read. ... e=37558599

This guy owns the 7D and 60D. His lenses all need various MFA adjustments on his 7D, but all the lenses focus fine on the 60D. My 60D with the lenses I have also focuses well.

[UrsaMajor]

Given the problems you encountered with your A700, it's interesting to see that a recent Consumer Reports survey of DSLR cameras from 2005 on shows that on average the most reliable brand is Sony. Proof once again that "on average" says very little about the experiences of a specific individual.

With best wishes,
- Tom -

[Dr. Harout]

You don't need any MFA on a55.

[bakubo]

Given the problems you encountered with your A700, it's interesting to see that a recent Consumer Reports survey of DSLR cameras from 2005 on shows that on average the most reliable brand is Sony. Proof once again that "on average" says very little about the experiences of a specific individual.

Yes, my 2 KM 7D bodies and A700 have all been QC lemons. My wife's A100 that I gave her has some bad points, but only one QC problem that I found and it was small and I was able to sort of fix it myself. It means absolutely nothing what someone else's experience is when I also have personal experience. My personal experience is all that is important. Yes, I hope in the last couple of years Sony has improved their QC. The early mini-fiasco with the 16-80mm QC is another example, but it seems that more recent ones are better.

[bakubo]

You don't need any MFA on a55.

Maybe both Canon and Sony have gotten better with AF. If so then it is good news. I haven't been following the A55 as much so I don't know if there are many FF and BF problems posted. If not then that is good. Lots of people prefer faulty AF with MAF to non-faulty AF though. Personally, I prefer just having it work well without FF and BF problems. No doubt the A7xx and A9xx will eliminate MAF also.

[bakubo]

Someone posted this recently. There is still a lot of speculation why the 60D seems to AF so much better than other bodies even though it doesn't have MFA.

Here's a Canon patent from 2009 which looks like it might explain technology that could make MFA unnecessary on the 60D. It describes how the camera goes through an automatic AF calibration process with each shot. Of course, it isn't known if this is implemented in the 60D.

http://www.pat2pdf.org/patents/pat20100110272.pdf

[bakubo]

I finally got around to updating the firmware in my 60D from v1.0.5 to v1.0.9 (I skipped the ones in between). Although Canon didn't document any improvements in LV CDAF there were reports from several users that it got much faster. Today I played a bit with CDAF LV before updating and then again after updating. The AF speed has improved quite a lot. Of course, there is also the LV PDAF mode (quick LV) too, but it involves having the mirror momentarily come down and then go back up.

I know from all the years I worked in software development that we often did not announce every single change made in new versions. As you do development you fix bugs in addition to adding new functionality. Someone suggested that maybe Canon had accidentally left a debug flag turned on in the LV CDAF code. Don't laugh. I know that this kind of stuff happens and it gets released sometimes.

[bakubo]

Here is an update for several odds and ends I have thought about lately. I have been using the 60D for about 7 months and it is still flawless with no QC problems or faults. Knock on wood!

On my A700 and 60D (and 30D before that) I have it set to separate the AF function from the shutter button and the shutter button does not do AF. In the case of the A700 that means that the jog/joystick button on the back is pressed to AF. On the 60D it is the AF-ON button on the back that you press. I have found that my thumb always finds the A700 toggle without error because it is rather big, has a very distinctive feel, and there is nothing in the area that is similar. With the 60D there are 3 identical buttons lined up next to each other and the AF-ON button is one of them. Probably about 5% of the time my thumb lands on the wrong button and then when there is no AF I have to move my thumb to the correct button. From reading forums and talking with friends it seems like this would not be an issue for most other people since most people keep the default function of AF activated by the shutter button, but it is a slight annoyance for me. I wish the AF-ON button was a bit bigger and had a distinctive feel. I could probably put a tiny piece of rough tape or something like that on it to give it a different feel and maybe I will do that.

Related to the above, I have discovered something else. With AF separated from the shutter button on the A700 you lose the ability to have servo focus work. You can keep the jog/joystick button (AF) pressed, but the A700 doesn't try to maintain focus. This works on the 60D. Of course, servo focus with the A700 + 18-250mm doesn't really work anyway. With the 60D + Tamron 18-270mm non-PZD it works pretty well.

When I first got the 60D I wrote here that the mode dial on the 60D cannot be turned continuously around so when you reach the C (custom) setting it stops and then you have to turn it the other way to go back. I thought this might be inconvenient for me sometimes. As it turns out, this has proven to be a non-issue for me. The only settings after C are the scene modes and I never use them and never have on any camera. The only modes I use are A, M, S, P, B, C and those are all grouped together.

Another thing I mentioned earlier in this thread was that when changing ISO on the 60D it stops at the highest ISO and doesn't roll around to the lowest ISO (and vice-versa). The A700 can do this. I still think it would be better if the 60D did this, but it turns out to be much less important to me on the 60D than it was on the A700. The reason it was so useful on the A700 was that auto ISO maxed out was ISO 200-1600. On the 60D when it is maxed out it is ISO 100-6400. With the A700 while walking around I usually used auto ISO, but often found myself getting out of it and for a particular photo selecting an ISO that was out of the auto ISO range. With the 60D and the much wider auto ISO range I find myself very rarely getting out of auto ISO for just a shot or two.

By the way, I have had a chance to play with a NEX 5 + 18-55mm a few times. It seems to me that the NEX CDAF and 60D CDAF are about the same speed. I so rarely use LV that it doesn't matter much to me, but it is good to see that the 60D CDAF is as good as the NEX.

[Birma]

Interesting update Henry. How did you find using the Nex without a VF (I seem to remember this was one of your big concerns)?

[bakubo]

Interesting update Henry. How did you find using the Nex without a VF (I seem to remember this was one of your big concerns)?

I find the NEX LCD for use here (and other places with bright sun) to be hardly usable. I expect that Sony will be adding an EVF to NEX in the future, at least for some models. Just look at Sony video cameras. Notice that LCD-only is for the low-end cameras. The low-end stuff often just has an LCD, but the NEX-VG10 and higher-end video cameras all have an EVF.

A couple of weeks ago I saw a tourist standing with a NEX 5 + 18-55mm so I stopped to talk to him. He was from Germany and here with his wife. I asked him how he liked the NEX. He said he bought it a bit before this Hawaii vacation and had also considered a Panasonic. He said he liked the style and size of the NEX better than the Panasonic and he generally liked the NEX now that he had used it awhile, but it had two problems in his opinion. The most serious was that he has lots of trouble seeing the LCD clearly here in Hawaii and even shading it with his hand only helps a little. I suggested that he use the sunny LCD setting, but he said he is using that and it doesn't help much. He said that when he used the NEX in Germany the LCD seemed to be okay, but Hawaii is different so it is not good for vacations. The other problem for him is that the LCD can't be tilted when taking vertical shots. Otherwise he likes it, but because of this experience here he thought that he would replace it with the Panasonic when he returns home. He mentioned that the Panasonic has a viewfinder and an LCD that tilts in both directions. Since he mentioned a viewfinder I assume he must be referring to the Panasonic GH2 (or GH1/G2/G1). With the new, smaller G3 then maybe that would work better for him.

Unfortunately, when I have had a chance to look outside at the NEX and other LCD-only cameras here in Hawaii I have seen the same problem. The sun is bright and you can't get a good view (sometimes you can't really see any view to speak of) and you also can't see the on-screen info with the LCD. Seeing some vague view in the LCD is enough for some people and some photos, but an EVF for these situations is needed.

Of course, except for the people with SLRs most people are using the LCD of their digicams, phone cameras, and ILCs here. Well, using it and getting much benefit from it are two different things. People use what they have. You may remember seeing this photo that someone posted recently. It shows that people manage to use what they have even if it takes a lot of effort and the result isn't nearly as good as the proper tool.

bucket_seat.jpg

(95.58 KiB) Downloaded 2083 times