Well, I recently picked up a new camera. Now, a lot of people have said, don’t get the d60, its really just a d40 with Dynamic Lighting built in. I have to both agree and disagree to some extent. While its a lot of the same, same body, same size and feel, it also ups a few features I find the value in while not killing your budget. Oh, and they have a deal where you can get an additional 55-200mm lense for no extra charge!
Nikon D60 10.2MP Digital SLR Camera with 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G AF-S DX VR Nikkor Zoom Lens
1, continuous shooting is snappier for sharper images. Its no secret that hand held shots are blurry when on the go and you don’t have a tripod on hand or time to set one up. Continuous shooting helps you choose the sharpest images from any subject you may be shooting. Any faster you make it in frames per second, the better, even if it is only marginally, you will get sharper images every time.
2, lower ISO for slightly smoother images and macro shots. Some people say you can’t tell the difference, but if you really compare the two side by side you will see less noise with the 100 than in a 200 shot and smoother overall glow for thing like flowers and such.
With 10 megapxels in the d60 vs 6 in the d40, ISO-100 helps when cramming in more details so you don’t get that grainy blue in sky shots and neutral gray tones aren’t washed out as one solid color.
3, highest ISO, 3200 and its as clean as any camera at that high an ISO. Not that you will need it or should be shooting in 3200, but the Auto-no flash option for indoor shots when a flash can’t be used, say, against glass in a museum or aquarium, comes in really handy and gets a much cleaner picture in my opinion than the d40. Having the option to go up to 3200 if needed is a plus, but probably won’t be making it into any galleries with shots that high of an ISO.
4 More megapixels and slightly larger sensor, larger images at the largest setting. (3,008 x 2,000 for the d40, 3,872 x 2,592 for the d60, and yes it makes a difference to me when I do fine prints, I have more area to play with when cropping images before printing! Still doesn’t go as large as my Kodak Widescreen 16:9 shots, but that camera needs a tripod for every shot just to come close to anything sharp in a picture. Otherwise its damn near impossible to get a good shot on manual settings, and the auto/p modes over expose everything and have no changeable lens or clip on filters so you tend to get horrible washed out colors or overly saturated tones, even when bracketing exposures are used)
5, True Whitebalance control! The d40 does auto whitebalance, nothing else. With the d60, you can get creative and use images on the camera as a white balance setting, or set your own based on something in front of you as well as many built in ones. It greatly corrects indoor lighting and low light pictures in dark places to get the exact color of what you see in front of you. What you see is what you get when you set it correctly in manual mode(Pre). Auto tends to leave different color temperatures than what is really there, either too blue, or too yellow/red. Manually setting the white point before a shot is something many photographers would do on a film camera, with metering and all kinds of things involved, this makes it dead simple and easy to use.
I’m not a pro camera guy or anything, but I do like to take photos. I have been getting more and more into photography over the years and know the value of a good camera is key to nice shots. Yes, there are those who say, camera does not matter, its the photographer and the subject, but more than having a good eye is knowing that you don’t need a $5,000 camera to get the same shots you can with a $200 camera. It just depends on how hard you want to work at it and what format you want to live with. I don’t have the patience with Film cameras, and wasting time developing blurry images is not why I like to shoot pictures learning how to correct things like a Camera Jedi. I also don’t like simple point and shoot cameras because they leave out the part of experimenting with lenses and filters, as well as the intimate joy of getting that most excellent shot, which can often be impossible with the wrong camera. The d60, for me, is the middle ground, somewhere between pro-sumer and consumer price range while giving next to stellar pro shots on anyones budget!
Here are some shots from my new camera:
http://xxdigipxx.deviantart.com/art/Quinn-Maree-and-Audrey-Taylor-130236938
http://xxdigipxx.deviantart.com/art/Audrey-Taylor-11mos-130236403
http://xxdigipxx.deviantart.com/art/s0metimes-they-weep-131200036