As I have mentioned before, the biggest drawback to the Nikon D60 is the way it tends to blow out highlights in contrasty conditions when exposure compensation is set to 0.0.
For the past four weeks I have been travelling in India and this has proved to be a real test of the camera. In terms of reliability it has behaved flawlessly. I have just one lens with me – the 35mm f1.8 AF-S Nikon lens. It has been excellent for most purposes.
I wished it had a longer reach when we spotted wild elephants in Rajaji National Park. Sometimes I have wished it had a wider span – particularly for some street scenes – but on the whole it has been excellent.
Which brings me back the blown highlights problem. The seemingly obvious solution is to dial in some negative compensation. About -0.7 is enough for moderately contrasty scenes. But the problem is that this underexposes the darker parts of the scene and they really suffer.
My solution has been to let small parts of the highlights blow, and otherwise to simply avoid scenes that are too high contrast.
Judge for yourself with this scene:
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