Metering
Like both the Canon EOS 550D and EOS 7D, the EOS 60D uses Canon’s 63-zone iFCL metering system. While this system may not have as many zones as other cameras, which have hundreds or thousands of them, you do have to question how many an evaluative metering system actually needs.
For the most part the EOS 60D performs extremely well in its evaluative metering mode; in fact, I rarely had to take it out of this mode or adjust the exposure compensation. Where I did have to adjust the exposure it was generally to darken images by around 0.3EV when shooting in the shade.
I found that the system has a tendency to lighten dark areas a fraction more than I would have desired. The only time I found exposures actually needed lightening was when photographing white lilies near a window. Here the metering was understandably fooled by the bright white flowers and consequently darkened the image.
Image: In evaluative metering the EOS 60D prioritises the foreground until the sky becomes around half the total image
One interesting test I performed was photographing a landscape scene with a bright overcast sky. I took a series of images starting with the viewfinder being completely filled by the landscape, with no sky visible.
I then proceeded to tilt the camera upwards, taking shots at regular intervals as the amount of sky in the frame increased.
Interestingly, the metering system produced a good exposure for the foreground each time, until it reached the point where the image was split 50/50 between foreground and sky. This produced almost the optimum exposure with a slightly darker but detailed foreground, and a bright but not completely burnt-out sky.
As soon as there is more bright sky than foreground in the frame, the exposure changes dramatically, with the metering now exposing solely for the bright sky.
Although it is obvious that the evaluative metering would adjust to expose for the sky in this way, it was interesting to see how dramatically it can affect exposure with only a slight shift.
