Canon EOS 60D - more of the same

The new Canon EOS 60D has been designed to fill the gap you hadn't spotted between its existing EOS 550D and EOS 7D video-friendly models.

The end result will, in video terms, be essentially the same. However, it has a few new features that 7D owners (us…), will wish for, and might tempt some would-be 550D buyers to spend a little extra.

The most obvious feature is its articulating LCD screen, which will make it a lot easier to get low- or high-angle shots.

It also has full manual control of video settings, which is certainly nice creatively, and manual audio controls with the ability to turn off automatic gain control (it also has a stereo mic input), which would be a jolly useful addition to the external audio recorder you'll probably need to have anyway.

Otherwise, the picture quality (stills and video) seems to be unchanged from the 550D/7D. Is it a less expensive 7D without the tank-like build quality and a couple of features useful for stills, or a more expensive 550D with extra features and better build quality, or both…?

Specs: it records 1920x1080p HD video at 24, 25 and 30fps or 720p video at 50 and 60fps onto SDXC cards, using the MPEG-4 AVC, H.264 codec (.mov files) at 44mbps. It will list at $1,100 (body only) or $1,400 (with 18-135mm kit lens – a very nice lens with a useful range for video).

Canon has also announced an updated version of its EOS E1 plug-in for Apple's Final Cut Pro with support for the 60D. It converts recordings into ProRes 422 at least twice as fast as Apple’s standard conversion and allows logging with timecode, reel names and metadata. It also provides support for multi-core processing, for faster conversions on higher-powered Macs. It already works with the Canon 5D Mark II, 1D Mark IV, and 7D.

By David Fox