The good:
Let me start with the good things first. There are plenty of pleasing characteristics about this camera:
First of all, there is the camera body. To me the body is perfect in size and weight. It is light enough to carry around everywhere, to be strapped around my neck for a longer time or for just being carried around in my hand. And that is an important matter to me on long walks and excursions at all sorts of various locations where I would find it annoying to put the camera in and out of my bag. The camera body is with 522g (including battery) very light. With the kit lens (18-55mm 1/3.5-5.6 VR) it only weighs around 787 g. And that is indeed a good feature. The Nikon D80 I used for a few times is with 703 g for body including battery a lot heavier. I know that this weight difference does not sound much on paper, but plays a big role in the real world. It is definitely more tiring to cary a D80 around than it is a D60. The size of the body certainly plays a role as well. I am absolutely thrilled of the size of the camera body of the D60. It is perfect for me. It fits in my hand and I can handle all the buttons easily without or with (thin) gloves. Brilliant. The thought of ever having to carry a bigger camera around is not pleasing. Again, my comparison is mainly the D80 which is not a lot bigger, but enough to make a significant difference for the worse in carrying it comfortably for an extended period of time. The body of the D60 itself is nicely built and does not have a "plastic feeling" to it (although it is plastic). That is also a big advantage. In short: I absolutely fancy the size, weight and make of this camera body.
The small size of the body comes for a price though: there are not too many function buttons on the body and the camera also misses the for larger Nikons (and other dSLR's) typical status LCD display on top of the camera body. The display is certainly something I would like to have - but not for exchange of a larger camera body. So I deal with it. The missing LCD display is ok for my type of outdoor shootings anyways. A studio or fashion photographer would probably not want to miss this feature, but that breed is unlikely to shoot with a D60 anyways. The lack of function buttons is brilliantly made up for with the simply stunning menu on the back of the LCD screen. This menu is simple to use (yes, even the full menu in manual mode) and the display has enough contrast to be used and comfortably read in bright sunlight. That was once concern of mine when I purchased this camera but it proofed to be an unnecessary one. Every single function of this camera can be called up using this menu with only a few clicks. As a matter of fact, the overall usability of the user menu is the only single fact which sold me to NIKON over CANON - or others.

The bad:
Like with every product, there are a few not so great things to be said about it. Let me start with one of the most unnecessary features, which was very hyped by NIKON's marketing department: the active D-lighting. This feature (when switched on) is supposed to give the photographs taken a higher dynamic range: photos show more details in shadows while at the same time do not suffer from highlight clipping. I tried this feature during a few shootings in subway tunnels and quickly decided not to use it any further. The mathematical algorithms that render the image from the data coming from the chip simply brighten the shadows of a recorded image. This can lead (if the shadows are dark enough) to significant noise increase in the image in the dark areas. I can achieve a cleaner, less noisy effect of increased dynamic range by shooting RAW and blending two differently converted images from one single exposure in the digital dark room. Granted, that is a lot more work, but depending on the image well worth it. I suppose that this feature serves its purpose for the generic vacation or family event shots (e.g.), but if you want to produce stunning and clean photographs, I would leave the active D-lighting feature switched off. And yes, the camera gets significantly slower using this feature. There are plenty of different opinions out there about this feature in the D60 - and this was just my two cents worth.
The image noise, or ISO performance, belongs unfortunately in this section as well. Image noise is very low at ISO 100 and 200, acceptable low (depending on what you shoot) at ISO 400 and too high at ISO 800 and above. But let me clarify this: Photographs taken at ISO 800 are still acceptable for everyday use. They really are ok. But, an image captured at this (or any higher) ISO setting can not undergo any alteration in the digital darkroom. The amount of underlying image noise shows in that case immediately and will render a photograph fairly useless. I personally set the maximum ISO to be used in any of the automatic modes to 400 max. I shoot manually at 400 max and don't plan on going over that again. I got burned to often. But that is only my personal opinion and in the end in the eye of the beholder - or the viewer of the photograph.

The kit lens should be mentioned here as well. The 18-55mm (1/3.5-5.6) VR lens does deliver crisp images. The fall-off at the edges of the image at the very wide and very long range of this lens is greater than wanted but to be expected for a lens in this price range. So, nothing too bad there, really. In that respect it is a nice lens that comes with the camera. What puts this lens for me in the "bad" section is simply the fact, that it does not have a lens hood mount and the front end rotates with focusing. The fact that a lens hood can not be mounted is just poor. I mean, seriously? Are you kidding me, NIKON? That is, even for a hobby shooter, a big miss. Think about shooting in light rain or snow: the glass gets immediately wet. And the fact, that the lens rotates with focusing just makes using any soft of graduated or polarizing filter a real pain in the rear end, as I mentioned in a previous post.

The ugly:
I have only two real peeves with this camera.
First, it has only three focal points. At first I thought, that that is totally fine, since my previous camera had only three as well. But that camera also had a feature called the "flexible spot" autofocus. This feature allowed me to move a small focusing (and metering) spot across almost the entire framed image. This was useful when the camera was mounted on a tripod. Don't forget that this was a feature of a camera with an electronic viewfinder - a dSLR could not possibly have this feature. And three focal points are just not good for any tripod shot. One does simply not always want to focus somewhere along the center line of an image. That is very limiting indeed. Give me nine, give me five, but don't give me three. Of course I found a workflow as a workaround this limitation which does the trick - but its tedious to go through. The small amount of focal points results in each focal point being rather large. Which makes using the built in meter for spot metering a bit tricky - but I quickly learned to work it. So, I am not too concerned about that bit of it.
The second big miss is the lack of pre-shutter release mirror lock up. The mirror in the D60 can only be locked up for cleaning purposes, but not for shooting. Which would be invaluable for any tripod shot. No big deal, big deal - one can argue about it. To me it is a huge deal. This is a shortcoming of this camera. Come on, this is maybe a beginners camera, but it IS a dSLR. That is simply a feature that belongs into a camera of this class, although the lady from NIKON told me off very rudely at the 2009 photoshop world expo in Boston when I mentioned it to her.

The verdict:
I am very happy I bought this camera. It works with me, it works for me and I can work it. It produces photographs of stunning quality. Most features of this camera work the way they are supposed to work -auto focusing in low light conditions stick out which I did not mention above. Other features that don't work for me I simply don't use (like the active D-lighting). I love the package in every respect. If I would have to make the decision of purchasing it again as of today, I would probably lean more towards the D5000, simply because of the included mirror lock up feature and the increased amount of focal points. Will I migrate to another camera anytime soon? No. I like it and rather put my money towards a new 18-55 mm lens to replace the kit lens. Other than that I am happy with the NIKON D60 and I certainly hope you like the results it produces, some of which you can find in my image gallery....

Tags: User review - Hardware, Nikon D60, Camera, Lens, dynamic range