There are three requirements:

1. You must own a D60
2. You must live in the USA
3. You must be a member of the Nikon Cafe (registration is free) in order to send a Private Message to David to place your name in the queue.

Good luck!

First test

Gianluca shares some quick first impressions of the combination and a couple of images.

Second test

This series was shot during a walkabout in a small town, Diamante in south Italy.

Summary from the discussion:

1. Except for photo no. 4, the photographs did not go through post-processing (that is, they were straight from the camera).
2. The D60 is a lot more fun than the Fuji F31fd.

Other thoughts on the combo:

1. The 18-200mm VR is not as sharp as he had hoped, but the zoom range and VR (vibration reduction) are useful features. His lens performs well at 18mm, but not at other focal lengths. It is the best choice for folks who don’t wish to always change lenses on their cameras.

At Saint Gennaro’s church

Larger photos are here. The church is located in Praiano, Amalfi coast.

Equipment used were the brand new Nikon D60 and Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR lens. Brief comments on the 16-85’s handling and sharpness are here.

See more of Cotropitor’s images at his Flickr gallery and visit the official Nikon 16-85 site for more information.

Here are some sample images.

First, a photo of my twin daughters taken with the Nikon D60 in P mode, ISO 400 and the internal flash popped up.

Exposure is pretty good but as expected, this photo lacks quality lighting. Objects nearer the camera are lit more brightly than objects further away. In this photo, the jam bottles appear brighter than my daughters. Plus you get that ugly dark background. Sometimes, a dark background is desirable, but for most family and event-type images, it’s something to avoid, or minimize as much as possible.

Next I try and take another picture of them by mounting the SB-400 flash on the D60, with the flash head angled at 75 degrees. The light from the flash head is bounced off the ceiling, and is spread all around and reflected off the walls and other surfaces.

I don’t know about you, but I much prefer this lighting which looks miles more natural and pleasing compared to that in the previous photo. Yeah the composition leaves much to be desired, but hey I captured the two girls doing some cute moves, and in nice lighting to boot

Unlike the more advanced SB-600 or SB-800 flash units from Nikon, the SB-400 doesn’t allow you to point the flash head up at the ceiling if you’re taking a photo in a vertical (aka portrait) orientation. Still, with the flash head angled at the same 75 degrees, I took this photo a split second later.

The lesson here is that you’d still get a much more interesting, if not better lighting, if you bounce your flash when taking indoor photos. In the example above, the light from the SB-400 is now bounced off whatever surfaces that were on my left, and then reflected all around.

Next up, a still-life snapshot. This one’s with the internal flash:

And now, the same scene but with the SB-400 mounted on the D60 and the flash head tilted at 75 degrees to bounce the light off the ceiling:

I’ll let the results speak for itself.

Recommended batteries for the SB-400

I use rechargeable Maha Powerex NiMH 2700 mAh AA batteries for my SB-800 and I used the same in the SB-400 for these shots. These batteries are by far the best I’ve owned. If you’re in Malaysia, you’ve no doubt seen the ubiquitous GP batteries - don’t get those. The Powerex batteries hold their charge much better, and don’t run out of juice as quickly.

… more to come - stay tuned! …

There’s a table in the Nikon D60 manual that shows the following differences between both lenses:

Lens construction
non-VR: 7 elements in 5 groups (including 1 ED glass element an 1 aspherical element)
VR: 11 elements in 8 groups (1 aspherical lens element)

Dimensions:
non-VR: Approximately 70.5 x 74mm (2.8 x 3.0 in.) - extension from the camera’s lens-mount flange
VR: Approximately 73 x 79.5mm (2.9 x 3.1 in.) - extension from the camera’s lens-mount flange

Weight:
non-VR: Approximately 205g (7.2 oz)
VR: Approximately 265g (9.4 oz)

It’s too bad Nikon doesn’t supply a lens hood for either lens. You’d need to purchase a Nikon HB-45 hood separately, at Amazon, B&H or Shopzilla

The Nikon D60 allows flash compensation in the range of -3 EV to +1 EV.

The shooting menu

Noise reduction

Off is the default, and NR (noise reduction) is turned off at ISO sensitivities of 800 or less. The D60 performs NR on images shot at sensitivities above 800, and there is no way for you to turn this off except by shooting RAW and then controlling the amount of NR in Nikon Capture NX software. In the EXIF data, noise reduction is reported as High ISO NR: ON (Low).

NR needs to be set to On if you want to take long exposures or you wish the D60 to perform NR on images shot at sensitivities greater than 400.

Here’s something interesting. For longer exposures, say 8 seconds or slower, you’ll see ‘Job nr’ flashing in the viewfinder - this in when the camera is performing noise reduction via a dark frame subtraction. The time taken for long exposure NR is approximately equal to the exposure time. The manual states that if switch the camera off before it has the chance to complete the task, then long exposure NR will not be performed.

So my buddy ended up buying the following (click the image for a larger version):

That’s the:

1. Nikon D60
2. SB-400 flash
3. Nikon 18-55mm VR
4. Nikon 55-200mm VR

And everything went into a nice NikonImaging.com shopping bag, the likes of which I’d not seen before:

I borrowed his entire set of equipment for a week to do some testing - how painful is that for my friend - he paid cold, hard cash for everything and doesn’t even get first chance to play around with it

Click the photo for a larger version.

Click here for the EXIF as show in Nikon View NX.

Amazon: This is a predefined link for Nikon D60 configurations on Amazon.

B&H: Here’s their D60 page.

J&R: Shop for the Nikon D60 10.2 Megapixel Digital Camera SLR Body and Nikon D60 10.2 Megapixel Digital Camera SLR Body and Lens Kit at J&R.

Search multiple stores: Here are links to Nikon D60 search results on Shoplinc and Shopzilla