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Canon EOS 60D For Dummies
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Published:
February 8, 2011
Overview
A full-color guide to all the bells and whistles in your new Canon 60D
If you own a Canon 60D, you?ve got a camera for advanced amateurs and one that?s very close to professional-level equipment. Now it?s time to make sure you get the very most out of all that power. Julie Adair King teams up with Robert Correll to help digital camera users catch their skills up to what their cameras have to offer in this fun but thorough guide. Understand all your camera?s features, move beyond the security blanket of Auto mode, and start capturing the pictures you?ve dreamed of.
- Gives you the full picture on Canon?s EOS 60D dSLR
camera, in the friendly, easy-to-follow, For Dummies style
The Canon 60D dSLR camera, the expertise of Julie Adair King and Robert Correll, and your own, untapped ability?all you need now is the book! Canon EOS 60D For Dummies.
The Canon EOS 60D packs a lot of power — and to maximize that power, you need to become familiar with all the buttons, dials, and screens to be able to work them effectively. Then you'll be on your way to taking great digital photos with the Canon EOS 60D!Canon EOS 60D walkaround: buttons, dials, and switchesThe Canon 60D is a well-designed camera, with plenty of buttons and dials, an articulated LCD monitor that flips out and rotates, a memory card slot, and IO ports.
About The Author
Julie Adair King has written numerous books on Nikon and Canon cameras as well as digital photography. She also conducts digital photography classes at the Palm Beach Photographic Centre. Robert Correll is a creative professional and the author of High Dynamic Range Digital Photography For Dummies.
Articles From The Book
3 results
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With your Canon EOS 60D in Creative Auto mode, you can affect picture brightness and depth of field to some extent by using the Exposure and Background sliders. However, you don’t have full control over either aspect of your images, and you have no access to certain camera options that can help you solve tough exposure problems.
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Through the Shoot by Ambience and Shoot by Lighting or Scene Type options on your Canon 60D, you can customize Basic Zone modes to better match your artistic desires and the lighting at hand. Both “Shoot By” tools extend beyond the pure basics of automatic shooting and rely on you to make decisions that add value to your photos.
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When you select a Quality setting that results in a JPEG image file, the Canon EOS 60D tries to enhance your photo while it’s processing the picture. Unlike Highlight Tone Priority, which concentrates on preserving highlight detail only, Auto Lighting Optimizer adjusts both shadows and highlights to improve the final image tonality.
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The built-in flash on your Canon 60D has three basic modes of operation: Auto flash, in which the camera decides when to fire the flash, basing its decision on the lighting conditions; On, in which the flash fires regardless of the lighting conditions (you may hear this flash mode referred to as force flash because the camera is forced to trigger the flash even if its exposure brain says there’s plenty of ambient light); and Off, in which the flash does not fire — no way, no how.
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You can take advantage of the automatic White Balance Bracketing capabilities of the Canon EOS 60D. With this feature, the camera records the same image three times, using a slightly different white balance adjustment for each one.
This feature is especially helpful when you’re shooting in varying light sources: for example, a mix of fluorescent light, daylight, and flash.
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One of the many advantages of investing in the Canon EOS 60D is that you can customize its performance to suit the way you like to shoot. Setup menus help you accomplish such things as setting the date and time, setting up the camera’s file-numbering system, and adjusting monitor brightness.
At the risk of being conventional, start your camera customization by opening Setup Menu 1.
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The Canon EOS 60D lets you customize the way it functions to suit you. Its three Setup menus help you create and manage basic camera settings.
Setup Menu 2 offers the following customization options:
LCD Brightness: Make the camera monitor brighter or darker. After highlighting the option on the menu, press the Set button.
Canon
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When setting up your new Canon EOS 60D you can customize its performance to suit the way you like to shoot. Its Setup menus help you set the date and time, set up the camera’s file-numbering system, and adjust monitor brightness.
Setup Menu 3 contains the following offerings (some of which are not available in all modes).
Canon
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For great close-up shots, start out by checking your lens manual to find out the minimum close-focusing distance of your lens. How up close and personal you can be to your subject depends on your lens, not on the camera body of your Canon EOS 60D. The 18-135mm kit lens can be as close as 1.48 feet from the subject (subject to camera sensor) when zoomed to 135mm.
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Creative filters are distinctive software effects designed to change how a photo looks, and they provide a fun and easy way to process photos in your Canon EOS 60D. You can apply these filters to photos you’ve taken in the large Raw and any-sized JPEG file format. You don’t need a computer, and you don’t need to run sophisticated photo editing software.
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Canon does a good job of making it easy for you to change the most commonly used camera settings in the Canon EOS 60D menu system. The menus are organized logically, so it's pretty easy to find what you need.
To make finding your favorite options even simpler, the EOS 60D enables you to create your own custom menu containing up to six items from the camera’s other menus.
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One special setting on the Canon EOS 60D’s Mode dial that’s easy to overlook (but is cool and practical) is the Camera User Settings (C). With it, you set the shooting mode, shutter speed, metering mode, and so forth, and then save (register, in Canon lingo) those settings. Later, when you’re out shooting, recall those settings in an instant from the Mode dial, which is faster and less annoying than having to reset all those things again.
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Providing specific capture settings for scenic outdoor photography is tricky because there’s no single best approach to capturing a beautiful stretch of countryside, a city skyline, or another vast subject with your Canon EOS 60D. Depth of field is an example: One person’s idea of a super cityscape might be to keep all buildings in the scene sharply focused.
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Your EOS 60D offers Picture Styles, which you can use to further tweak color as well as saturation, contrast, and image sharpening. Sharpening is a software process that adjusts contrast in a way that creates the illusion of slightly sharper focus. The important thing to note in this context is that sharpening cannot remedy poor focus, but instead produces a subtle tweak to this aspect of your pictures.
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A still portrait is a photograph of a subject who isn’t moving. Assuming that a subject is willing to pose (or you catch her in a moment of relative calm), the classic portraiture approach is to keep the subject sharply focused while throwing the background into soft focus. This artistic choice emphasizes the subject and helps diminish the impact of any distracting background objects in cases where you can’t control the setting.
Canon
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Using a fast shutter speed is the key to capturing a blur-free shot of any moving subject, whether it’s a spinning Ferris wheel, a butterfly flitting from flower to flower, or a playful young girl. In the first image, a shutter speed of 1/100 second was too slow for the Canon EOS 60D to catch the subject without blur.
Canon
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The Canon EOS 60D packs a lot of power — and to maximize that power, you need to become familiar with all the buttons, dials, and screens to be able to work them effectively. Then you'll be on your way to taking great digital photos with the Canon EOS 60D!Canon EOS 60D walkaround: buttons, dials, and switchesThe Canon 60D is a well-designed camera, with plenty of buttons and dials, an articulated LCD monitor that flips out and rotates, a memory card slot, and IO ports.
Canon
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The Canon 60D is a well-designed camera, with plenty of buttons and dials, an articulated LCD monitor that flips out and rotates, a memory card slot, and IO ports. Use the following photos to find all these features.
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If none of the preset white balance options on your Canon EOS 60D produces the right amount of color correction, you can create your own, custom setting. To use this technique, you need a piece of card stock that’s either neutral gray or absolute white — not eggshell white, sand white, or any other close-but-not-perfect white.
Canon
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The Canon 60D’s Creative Auto mode might be better named “Full Auto Plus.” This mode is set up initially to work the same way as Full Auto. But if you don’t like the results you get, you can make the following adjustments for your next shot:
Enable or disable the flash.
Adjust color and contrast through the Shoot by Ambience option.
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Live View, the camera feature with which you frame images via its LCD monitor rather than the viewfinder, is enabled in the menu system on the Canon 60D by default. That is, it’s ready to be turned on the moment you need it, which you do by pressing the Live View button. Shooting Menu 4 contains the Live View settings.
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The Canon EOS 60D digital camera has a variety of exposure modes that cover all types of photography situations. Select a mode by using the Mode dial on the top-left side of the camera (and remember to push in the button in the center of the dial while you turn it). Some modes give you a lot of control over the camera, and some take it away.
Canon
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Your Canon EOS 60D enables you to tweak white balancing in a way that shifts all colors toward a particular part of the color spectrum. The result is similar to applying a traditional color filter to your lens.
To access this option, White Balance Correction, follow these steps:
Set the Mode dial to P, Tv, Av, M, B, or C exposure mode.
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When you shoot with the built-in flash, your Canon EOS 60D attempts to adjust the flash output as needed to produce a good exposure in the current lighting conditions. On some occasions, you may find that you want a little more or less light than the camera thinks is appropriate.
You can adjust the flash output by using the feature called Flash Exposure Compensation.
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Sometimes, no amount of fiddling with aperture, shutter speed, and ISO produces a bright enough exposure — in which case you simply have to add more light. The built-in flash on your Canon EOS 60D offers the most convenient solution.
In the automatic exposure modes, the camera decides when flash is needed. In Creative Auto mode, you can either let the camera retain flash control or set the flash to always fire or never fire.
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When the scene you’re shooting with your Canon EOS 60D contains both very dark and very bright areas, achieving a good exposure can be difficult. If you choose exposure settings that render the shadows properly, the highlights are often overexposed. Although the dark lamppost in the foreground looks fine, the white building behind it has become so bright that all detail has been lost.
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From the Quick Control screen on your Canon EOS 60D camera, you can change certain shooting settings without using the control buttons (ISO button, the Exposure Compensation button, and so on) or menus.
You can use this technique to adjust settings in any exposure mode, but the settings that are accessible depend on the mode you select.
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Including a copyright notice is a reasonable first step to take if you want to prevent anyone from using the pictures you take with your Canon EOS 60D without your permission. Anyone who views your picture in a program that can display metadata will see your copyright notice and know who owns the rights to the picture.
Canon
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The Canon EOS 60D offers Automatic Exposure Bracketing, or AEB. This feature makes it easy to bracket exposures, which simply means to take the same shot using several exposure settings to increase the odds that you come away with a perfectly exposed image.
Setting up AEB is easy. If you’ve learned how to use exposure compensation, the steps are very similar.
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Perched on the top-right edge of the viewfinder on your Canon EOS 60D is a tiny black knob. Officially known as a dioptric adjustment control, use this knob to adjust the magnification of the viewfinder to accommodate your eyesight.
Adjusting the viewfinder to your eyesight is critical: If you don’t, scenes that appear out of focus through the viewfinder may actually be sharply focused through the lens, and vice versa.
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You’ve no doubt noticed that your Canon EOS 60D displays a “Sensor Cleaning” message every time you turn off the camera. When you turn on the camera, a little “cleaning” icon flickers in the lower-right corner of the Shooting Settings display. These alerts tell you that the camera is automatically performing a maintenance step designed to remove any dust particles from the sensor that have made their way into the camera interior.
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Your Canon EOS 60D offers three different autofocusing schemes, which you select through the AF mode control (not to be confused with Live View AF Mode). The three choices work like so:
One-Shot: In this mode, which is geared towards shooting stationary subjects, the camera locks focus when you press the shutter button halfway.
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One way to change Custom Functions of the Canon EOS 60D is to change what direction you move the control dials to increase or decrease shutter speed and aperture values. To do so, start by accessing your EOS 60D Custom Functions, navigating to the function of your choice, and amending the settings to change the control dial direction to your liking:
Set the Mode dial to one of the exposure modes in the Creative Zone (P, Tv, Av, M, B, or C).
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In Drive mode, you tell the Canon 60D what to do when you press the shutter button: Record a single frame or a series of frames, or record one or more shots after a short delay.
Your camera offers the following Drive mode settings, which are represented by the symbols you see in the margin:
Single: This setting, which is the default for Creative Auto and all fully automatic modes except Portrait and Sports, records a single image each time you press the shutter button.
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Typically, the Set button serves a single function on the Canon EOS 60D: When a menu is displayed, you press the button to lock in menu selections. This setup keeps things simple, but you have the option to use the Set button for one additional task: displaying the Quality settings, the Flash Exposure Compensation setting, or several other handy items.
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A digital camera compensates for different colors of light through a feature known as white balancing. Simply put, white balancing neutralizes light so that whites are always white, which in turn ensures that other colors are rendered accurately. If the camera senses warm light, it shifts colors slightly to the cool side of the color spectrum; in cool light, the camera shifts colors in the opposite direction.
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The metering mode determines which part of the frame the Canon EOS 60D analyzes to calculate the proper exposure. The EOS 60D offers four metering modes. However, you can access all four modes only in the Creative Zone and only during regular, through-the-viewfinder shooting. In Live View mode, as well as in the fully automatic exposure modes, you’re restricted to the first of the four modes, Evaluative metering.
Canon
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With a Canon EOS 60D, the very first picture-taking setting to consider is the exposure mode, which you select via the Mode dial. Your choice determines how much control you have over two critical exposure settings — aperture and shutter speed — as well as many other options, including those related to color and flash photography.
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Some lenses produce pictures that appear darker around the edges of the frame than in the center, even when the lighting is consistent throughout. This phenomenon goes by several names, but the two heard most often are vignetting and light fall-off. How much vignetting occurs with your Canon EOS 60D depends on the lens, your aperture setting, and the lens focal length.
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When you set your Canon EOS 60D to the P, Tv, or Av exposure modes, you can enjoy the benefits of autoexposure support but retain some control over the final exposure. If you think that the image the camera produced is too dark or too light, you can use a feature known as Exposure Compensation, which is sometimes also called EV Compensation.
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New dSLRs continue to provide viable in-camera photo processing options. That’s right; you don’t always need to download the photo to your computer and slave over a photo editing application for hours trying to perfect a look. The Canon EOS 60D is no exception, with, among other things, robust support for Canon’s Picture Style solution.
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By default, you initiate metering and autofocusing with your Canon EOS 60D by pressing the shutter button halfway, and then lock autoexposure by pressing the AE (autoexposure) Lock button. The AF-ON button duplicates the behavior of the shutter button.
You can customize the locking behaviors of these three buttons via Custom Function IV-1.
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When you first use Live View mode on your Canon EOS 60D, you see your subject and the focusing frame. You can press Info to add basic shooting information (the exposure index, ISO, and battery indicator, to name a few) to the bottom of the display. A second press reveals an assortment of settings along the left side (white balance, AF mode, and so forth).
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Although it might not seem like a big deal, the red autofocus lights in the Canon EOS 60D’s viewfinder can sometimes be distracting, especially if four or five light up as you initiate autofocus (even though this happens only when the AF mode is One Shot or the initial autofocus when in AI Focus mode).
To put the kibosh on the red autofocus lights, follow these steps:
Set the Mode dial to a mode in the Creative Zone.
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In dim lighting, your camera emits an AF (autofocus)-assist beam from the built-in flash when you press the shutter button halfway (assuming that the flash unit is open, of course). This pulse of light helps the camera “see” its target better, improving the performance of the autofocusing system.
If you’re shooting in a situation where the AF-assist beam might be distracting to your subject or to others in the room, however, you can disable it.
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The 60D Edit feature makes it delightfully easy to remove unwanted parts from the beginning or end of a movie right on your camera. This onboard editing is handy but basic, so don’t expect miracles.
Here are the simple steps for trimming the start or finish of a movie:
Click the Edit icon (it looks like a pair of scissors) to enter the Editing screen.
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In any SLR camera (including the Canon EOS 60D), whether digital or film, light travels through the lens and is sent to the viewfinder by way of a mirror. When you press the shutter button all the way, the mirror flips up so that the light goes directly onto the image sensor, rather than being diverted to the viewfinder.
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To help ensure a proper exposure, your Canon EOS 60D continually meters the light until the moment you press the shutter button fully to shoot the picture. In autoexposure modes (that is, any mode but B and M), it also keeps adjusting exposure settings as needed.
For most situations, this approach works great, resulting in the right settings for the light that’s striking your subject when you capture the image.
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It can be frustrating when you’re working in a Creative Zone mode on your Canon EOS 60D camera, and you accidentally nudge the Quick Control dial and make a change to a random shutter speed or aperture. That’s the bad news. The good news is that you can lock the dial in place when you’re in a Creative Zone mode.
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You might never notice it, but when you press the shutter button to take a picture with flash enabled, the Canon EOS 60D emits a brief preflash before the actual flash. This preflash is used to determine the proper flash power needed to expose the image.
Occasionally, the information that the camera collects from the preflash can be off-target because of the assumptions the system makes about what area of the frame is likely to contain your subject.
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The Quick Control screen is a sort of one-stop shopping locale that displays your Canon EOS 60D’s shooting settings and enables you to modify them with a minimum of button presses and dial movements. Although it might look complicated, the Quick Control screen shows you what’s practically necessary at the time.
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It’s possible to connect your Canon EOS 60D to a television set for big-screen movie playback, but you don’t have to. To view movies on the camera monitor, follow these steps:
Press the Playback button and then locate the movie file.
When reviewing pictures in full-frame view, you can spot a movie file by looking for the little movie camera icon in the upper-left corner of the screen.
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For the quickest, most convenient Raw processing, you can do the job before you download images from your Canon EOS 60D by using the Raw Image Processing feature on Playback Menu 1 with no computer or other software required. However, you need to understand one limitation: You can save processed files only in the JPEG format.
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Modern digital SLRs like the Canon EOS 60D have sophisticated autofocusing systems that reduce the importance of having a focusing screen optimized for manual focusing. The result is that the focusing screen that comes with your EOS 60D is good for autofocus but has no manual focus or alignment aids.
You can replace the focusing screen that comes with the 60D in favor of one of two specialized screens: Precision Matte with Grid and Super Precision Matte.
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When you take a picture, the Canon EOS 60D can record the image orientation: that is, whether you held the camera horizontally or on its side to shoot vertically. This bit of data is simply added into the picture file. Then when you view the picture, the camera reads the data and rotates the image so that it appears upright in the monitor.
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When you shoot in any of the fully automatic exposure modes (Full Auto, Portrait, Landscape, and so on) as well as in Creative Auto, the Canon EOS 60D’s autofocusing system looks at all nine autofocus points when trying to establish focus. Typically, the camera sets focus on the point that falls over the object closest to the lens.
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The Canon EOS 60D is capable of recording HD-quality movies. It doesn’t have quite as many bells and whistles as a dedicated video camera, but it can shoot a good short film or two when necessary. When you’re ready to try your hand at moviemaking, take these steps:
Set the Mode dial to the Movie setting.
As soon as you select Movie mode, you can preview your shot on the monitor.
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Shooting still photos in Live View mode involves a few options that differ from those you encounter for regular photography with the Canon 60D. After you set up Live View the way you want it to work, follow these steps to take a picture:
Decide whether you want to use autofocusing or manual focusing, and set the lens to the appropriate position.
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One of the best things about digital photography is being able to view pictures right after you shoot them. And as the LCD monitors on cameras have gotten sharper and have higher resolutions, reviewing in-camera photos has steadily become more reliable. To switch your Canon 60D camera to Playback mode and view the images on your memory card, take these steps:
Press the Playback button.
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The Canon EOS 60D is the first Canon digital SLR that sports an articulated monitor: You can adjust the position of the LCD monitor on the back of the camera, moving it around to find the best position for you. The monitor, which is mounted on a sturdy hinge, can move in and out and even swivel. To protect it (or if you decide you don’t need it), you can even turn the monitor over so the screen faces into the camera body.
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The Histogram display is a variation of the Canon EOS 60D Image Playback Shooting Information display. You see the thumbnail view of your image, but this time some of the extensive shooting data is replaced by additional histograms. You actually see less printed info in the Histogram display mode.
Interpreting a brightness histogram
One of the most difficult photo problems to correct in a photo editing program is known as blown highlights, or clipped highlights in others.
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When you review still photos on your Canon EOS 60D, you can press the Info button to change the type and amount of shooting data that appear with the photo in the monitor. The data-display options start with the most basic and advance through the other playback display screens.
Displaying photo information and changing the amount to display is a pretty simple matter.
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Digital photography is great because you can check out your photos immediately after shooting them. With a Canon EOS 60D, you can even edit some image properties. You can enter Quick Control during playback and set several image properties. It’s a snap.
During playback, press Q.
Use the up and down arrows of the multicontroller to select a function from the left side of the screen.
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To more closely inspect a portion of a photo with your Canon EOS 60D, press the AF Point Selection button. This feature is especially handy for checking small details, such as whether anyone’s eyes are closed in a group portrait.
As with image rotating, zooming works only for still photos and only when you’re displaying photos one at a time.
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If your memory card contains scads of images, here’s a trick you’ll love: By using the Jump feature on the Canon EOS 60D, you can rotate the Main dial to leapfrog through pictures rather than press the multicontroller right or left a bazillion times to get to the picture you want to see. You also can search for the first image shot on a specific date or tell the camera to display only movies or only still shots.
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The Canon 60D’s Live mode autofocus is best suited for shooting static subjects, such as landscapes, portraits, or still lifes. If you’re shooting someone who is running all over the place, you’re going to have an impossible time focusing and getting a good shot using Live mode.
To use Live mode, follow these steps:
Set AF mode to Live mode:
Press Menu, navigate to Shooting Menu 4, highlight AF Mode, and then press Set.
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The Canon 60D’s Face Detection Live mode is best suited for taking portraits and casual shots of people and animals. The camera attempts to detect faces, automatically moves the AF point over faces, and then focuses. One big difference between this mode and the normal Live mode is that you don’t have to move the focus box around the screen.
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Shooting still photos in Live View mode involves a few options that differ from those you encounter for regular photography with the Canon EOS 60D. In fact, there’s even a separate Live View menu that contains options available only when the camera is in Live View mode.
Before you dig in, be aware of the following caveats about Live View photography:
Some photography features are disabled or limited in Live View mode.
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The Canon 60D’s Quick mode sounds great, and it certainly sounds quicker, but it has some quirks that you have to get used to. The monitor is blacked out when the camera is focusing. You can’t see what’s in the frame during this time. This can be disconcerting. Selecting an AF point (the same used by viewfinder AF modes) requires you to enter Quick Control mode.
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After you set the Mode dial to Movie mode on your Canon 60D, the viewfinder turns off, and you see your scene on the monitor. The same focusing frame you get in Live View mode appears, and the bottom of the screen shows the exposure meter, battery status icon, and shots-remaining value. If you press the shutter button halfway to engage the autoexposure meter, you also see the camera’s selected aperture (f-stop) and shutter speed.
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The Canon 60D raises the bar again with its full high-definition (HD) movie recording. You don’t have quite as many recording options as with a real (dedicated) video camera but you can make outstanding movies with your camera.
Before delving into the specifics, here’s a broad overview of moviemaking:
Movie quality: You can record movies at five different quality levels.
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Before you begin shooting a movie with a Canon 60D, review the basic recording settings. You adjust some settings from the Movie menus; for others, you can either visit menus or, for faster results, use the Quick Control method.
The Movie menus contain several recording options, including the one that enables or disables sound.
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Your Canon 60D offers several automatic point-and-shoot exposure modes. In any of those modes, though, the fundamental key to capturing good photos is to follow a specific picture-taking technique.
Give it a whirl. Start by setting the Mode dial on top of the camera to Full Auto. Then set the focusing switch on the lens to the AF (autofocus) position.
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Not every photograph has to be level with the horizon. However, many types of photos (landscapes, cityscapes, and architectural photography, for example) suffer greatly when the camera is tilted. The old-fashioned solution to leveling your camera is to use a bubble or spirit level (found at photography stores) to check the camera’s alignment with the Earth.
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In Full Auto mode, represented on the Mode dial by a rectangle, the Canon 60D selects all settings based on the scene that it detects in front of the lens. Your only job is to lock in focus.
Full Auto mode is great for casual, quick snapshooting. But keep these limitations in mind:
Picture Style: Full Auto mode records your photo using the Standard Picture Style setting.
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Live View is the now-standard name given to the camera feature with which you frame images via its LCD monitor rather than the viewfinder, just as you may have done when using a point-and-shoot digital camera. On the Canon 60D, you can opt for Live View shooting for still photography; and for movie recording, it’s your only option because you can’t use the viewfinder when making movies.