Your Questions About Canon 60d

rob answers:

Ignore the DXO sensor tests, they are made using unprocessed RAWs.
They are not real world images.
Reviewing unprocessed RAWs is like reviewing a car without a gearbox.

5D is full frame. Great for portraits, lanscape. Very low light performance is good at extreme ISOs.

7D is APS-C, low light performance excellent up to ISO 1600, good at 3200, poor above that, for high ISOs you should shoot RAW and tweak the noise reduction, particularly chroma noise reduction in Adobe Camera RAW or Canons DPP.

The 7D is really a stand out camera for sports and nature. Very sophisticated AF system, with loads of points, all cross type points and double cross type sensor at centre with f2.8 or faster lenses.
If you need AF speed and accuracy for your stills the 7D is the best thing you can buy this side of a 1D series. It has a dedicated AF processer (only the 1D / 1Ds series cameras also have this) and it has Ai Servo mode adjustments, which make a huge difference to AF predicatability. Again, not seen on the 60D or 5D2.

The 60D has same sensor and processor as the 7D pretty much and so image quality is comparable.
If you aren’t exceptionally demanding of your AF then it’ll do very good job for you.

The 5D2 and the 7D are designed for very different users, it’s not a case of one is better than the other.

The 60D is a great camera, but keep an eye on the 600D / T3i, a bit more compact, same flip out screen, a subtle step down in AF performance, but again, same sensor, same processor.

rob answers:

Expect the 60D to range around 15000. The t2i lacks the thumb wheel on the back. Depending on what you are shooting this may or may not be important, but the placement of the thumb wheel on the 40 & 50D shaves seconds off of changing settings in fast paced high stress environments. If you are planning on shooting action of any kind purchase the D series or above. FPS are not nearly as important–time wise–as that thumb wheel.

Oh, you’re Canadian, that was 1500 USD. No idea how much in CAD

rob answers:

Can you clarify what you are asking, do you wish to use the 430EX II on top of the camera (in which case switch the camera and flash off, slide the flash on and screw the locking ring -this helps to make sure the contacts marry up correctly) switch the flash on, switch the body on and they should communicate pretty much seamlessly.

The 430EX II has a switch on the rear between slave mode and ordinary mode, make sure the gun is not in slave mode or there will be communication problems.

However.

If you are using the flashgun wirelessly off camera ( a very useful feature of the 60D) then put the gun in slave mode and select the appropriate firing mode in the flash menu -decide if you want the 430 only to fire during exposure, or whether you want both the on camera flash and the 430 to fire during exposure. Set the mode accordingly and away you go.

Check the flash mode, if its M you’ll need to control the power manually on flash, or by aperture / iso on camera. E-TTL works best with flash exposure lock or flash exposure compensation for most situations, easily controlled directly from the camera.

The flash on the camera will still need to fire to communicate with the off camera gun, but rest assured that this will be a milisecond before exposure and won’t interfere with your intended effect.

rob answers:

If you were a real film maker you’d know that the answer was neither.

Every youtube user with a dSLR now thinks they are the next Spielberg…

rob answers:

You can consider SanDisk SDCFX-032G-A61 32 GB Extreme CompactFlash Memory Card 60MB/S

Compatible with CompactFlash-enabled devices Including digital SLR cameras.
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Power core controller For moving data efficiently.
60MB/sec – 400x – write and read speeds
Captures pictures taken in rapid succession.