Image quality
Picture quality was generally good. Most shots exhibited accurate colours, though we saw a tendency towards a slight red or yellow colour cast. The best photos were exterior shots with plenty of light. However, when we lowered the light, the visual noise increased dramatically, with a corresponding degradation in sharpness and detail. Some of our ISO 400 photos were so riddled with noise they resembled frames from a video shot.
If you always select the automatic mode, you may be disappointed with the C-60 Zoom's low-light photos. However, if you're willing to experiment with the modes and the settings, you'll find that the noise filter can greatly improve ISO 200 and ISO 400 photos. The night mode (easily accessible from the mode dial) automatically engages the noise filter, and it helped us capture low-light photos with excellent colour saturation and manageable levels of visual noise. Super Macro mode was fun and effective, though we were unable to use it with the built-in flash.
We encountered a significant amount of barrel distortion with our wide-angle shots. That's not unusual for a pocket-size high-megapixel camera whose manufacturer is pushing the small sensor to its limits. While most shots displayed a broad contrast range with subtle shades of colour, some of our exterior photos showed a definite loss of detail in the brighter portions of the image. On bright, sunlit days, you may find high-contrast areas of sand or grass washed out in your photos.
If you like some tweakability thrown in with your all-automatic digital photography, and you want to shoot in an uncompressed format without the hassle of raw files, the C-60 Zoom is one of your dwindling options. Though there are better choices for picture quality and pocketability, this model still stands out from the crowd with some distinctive features.
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Shutter lag (typical) |
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Time to first shot |
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Typical shot-to-shot time |
Edited by Lori Grunin
Additional editing by Nick Hide
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