Flash

The D60 provides plenty of options for flash photography. For casual snapping you have the cameras built-in E-TTL flash unit, there's also an E-TTL compatible hotshoe for flash units such as the Canon 420EX or 550EX as well as a standard PC Sync terminal for use with studio strobe systems. The samples below were shot within a few seconds of each other to give a (rough) impression of the differences between each and to check colour accuracy.

Settings: ISO 100, EF 28-70 mm F2.8L, Large/Fine

Studio strobes (1/200 sec, F10)	Built-in flash (1/200 sec, F5)
Canon 550EX Direct (1/200 sec, F5)	Canon 550EX Bounced (1/200 sec, F5)

Studio setup: 2 x Elinchrom 300W strobes (1 x 70 cm softbox).

Long Exposure noise reduction / Night shots

Gone is custom function 1. What's the significance of that I here you cry? Well, on the D30 custom function 1 controlled the dark frame long exposure noise reduction system. When enabled the D30 would take a second 'dark frame' exposure immediately after the main exposure and subtract detected noise from the original shot. This would mean that a 5 second exposure took 10 seconds.

On the D60 Canon are handling long exposure noise reduction differently. There's no dark frame shot, as soon as the exposure has finished it's displayed on the LCD monitor which kind of hints that some how the CMOS sensor itself is detecting / removing noise as the shot progresses. What's even more remarkable is that the D60 produces far cleaner long exposures that the D30 ever could.

Typical night exposure

The (not particularly level) exposure of Tower Bridge below was taken with a fairly conservative four second exposure at ISO 100. As you can see the D60 manages to capture good detail and cope well with the bright lights on the bridge. Best of all there's no noise in sight, and certainly no 'stuck pixels'.

Settings: ISO 100, EF 28-70 mm F2.8L, Large/Fine, 4 sec, F8.0

The four minute exposure

This isn't a particularly interesting subject, however it was a quick test shot I performed using a remote release the D60 in Bulb mode. The exposure below was for an amazing 243 seconds (4 minutes and 3 seconds). This was long enough for the London skyline to turn into daylight (thanks to light pollution) and for the terrace opposite which was impossible to see with the naked eye to suddenly spring out of the image. What's fundamentally more impressive about this shot however is when you zoom in and look around the image. There is simply no visible noise, and this is a four minute exposure! There are a couple of stuck pixels, but nothing I'd get worried about. An absolutely stunning performance. Amateur astronomy look out, here comes the D60.

Settings: ISO 100, EF 28-70 mm F2.8L, Large/Fine, 243 sec, F8.0

The moon

This probably doesn't belong in this category as it was a 1/15 sec exposure, but I did shoot it at night and I was so happy with the shot that I just had to include it. The image below is a crop of the center of a D60 shot taken from a tripod using the EF 100-400 mm L lens @ 400 mm, no additional extenders. Click on the image below for the full size crop.

400 mm, ISO 100, 1/15 sec, F10