Canon EOS 20D

Excellent camera to go with when upgrading from a film camera. I have used Canon equipment for over ten years and haven't looked back. Even though Canon has discontinued the 20D it's predecessor's, 30D and 40D will be an excellent replacement. I have the Canon BG-E2 vertical grip on my 20D and it really make vertical shots a lot easier, especially with long lenses. The extra battery power is great and you don't have to recharge near as much if you just had one battery. I use the 18-55mm kit lens, Sigma 70-300 DL Macro lens and a Canon 100mm 2.8 Macro lens with this camera. They all work really well and if I need to ever upgrade my beloved 20D, I know my lenses will go with me.

As mentioned above in my Summary.

None

Canon Rebel
Canon EOS3
Nikon DH1 DSLR
Nikon F3HP
Nikon F4

In 2002 I had to use them on a lens one time and they did OK. Had to fight for them to get on the ball with my IS lens. Had to have them overnight it when it was done, b/c I had to send it back after they messed up the zooming on the lens. Maybe they have tightened up since then.

For a while, I had been debating among 20D, Digital Rebel XT, and Nikon D70. I finally picked 20D not only because of its fast frame capture rate and pixel resolution but also because of its sturdy magnesium alloy body. One of my friend has a Rebel and the body feels cheap. Some of the labels imprinted on the plastic actually started to fade.

I bought the 20D at the time when the 30D almost came out. Boy I made the right choice of not going for 30d but taking the rebate on the 20D. When pair up a good lens, the 20D is a very good performer. I extremely like the 5fps feature allowing me to pick the best shot by taking successive shots rapidly.

The built-in flash is adequate for casual shootings. It even comes with ISO3200 which I never use.

Start up time is fast which is important for me to shoot any unexpected event.

Solidly built
5 frames per second
Support Microdrive
Huge collection of EF and EFS lenses to choose from
Ease of use

Obsolete quickly especially after Rebel XTi is out in the market.
A lot more expensive than Rebel
USB does not work properly with my old SONY VAIO PC
CMOS sensor seemingly more sensitive to noise when in comparison with CCD of Nikon D70
Shutter doesn 't sound as nice as Nikon

I have tried Nikon D70 but still I prefer Canon 20D

Excellent camera. I have 3 other digitals but this is the one I shoot 98% of my commercial shots with. It is easy to handle and has performed flaulessly in all types of weather and temperatures.

Ease of use and reliability

None so far.

Minolta and Olympus digitals and several Canon film cameras as well as Bronica medium format equipment.

Haven't needed any as the camera is excellent.

After reading the reviews posted, I believe I must have purchased a bad specimen because my experience with the Canon 20D has been nowhere near the five star rating that the other reviewers have noted. Like others , I upgraded from the 300D which I thoroughly enjoyed. Unfortunately, I didn't get to take many pictures with it until over a year after I bought it. I took about 175 pictures last Christmas, mostly inside with flash, and none of the flash pictures were exposed correctly and many of the outside pictures were also underexposed. I wrote it off as being an amateur and set out taking more pictures. The next set was 75 pictures, mostly outdoors without flash. Again, almost every picture was underexposed with the exposure histograms shifted 25% to the left. When I got home and saw this I set out testing the camera with various setting and lenses and found out that the camera's exposure was off a full step. I emailed Canon and they recommended sending it to one of their service centers. "Electrical adjustments were carried out on the AE assembly." , which cost $180 plus shipping and the camera still underexposes by at least 2/3s of a step. I cannot imagine being a professional photographer and taking 500 or 1000 pictures and then having to use software on every picture to get a good shot. Of couse a professional would have figured this out the first time he/she touched this camera and dialed in a full step of exposure compensation immediately. This is what I am planning to do, but it essentially means that I cannot use any of the basic modes anymore. Why do I bother to write this? If you are considering this camera be aware of this underexposure issue. Test a model out if you can before you purchase it, or buy it from a reputable dealer who will let you exchange it if you don't like it's performance. While correcting underexposure with software is easy and better than having a camera that leans more towards overexposure, it is still a disappointment to see every picture underexposed. This was not my experience with the Canon 300D.

Underexposure

Canon 300D

Unsatisfactory

I waited until December 2004 to purchase a DSLR as an upgrade to the (film based) Canon EOS Elan 7e I had previously been shooting with. I say waited because I had been axiously following the development of DSLR 's waiting for the performance and feature set I needed to become affordable.

After using the Elan 7e for so long, the Canon EOS 20D immediately felt 'right' in my hands with the familiar The Quick Control Dial was always nice to use on the Elan 7e and continues to make using the camera easier and quicker than navigating with buttons as is the case with the Digital Rebel 300D.

My primary interest for owning the 20D is to photograph my children's sports activities. In this area, I have to give the 20D high marks overall, but that is not to say all is perfect.

The 20D starts up quickly and is ready to shoot with only a short delay.
The lagtime is almost non-existent on the 20D which makes timing peak action much easier than it ever was with point and shoot digitals. It will also go into 'sleep' mode after a selected amount of time so the battery life won't be wasted needlessly.Although the viewfinder is not as large as the old film based bodies due to the 1.6x crop factor, it is adequate with most of the needed information on display.

The user can select focus points which comes in handy for the sports shooter to keep the camera focused on the desired subject. In fact, the 20D has quite a number of custom functions that are user selectable so you can make it perform just the way you like it.

The burst rate of 5 fps is adequate for most sporting situations if needed, but good timing is still the best way to reliably capture peak action.

The optional battery grip is a nice addition for the sports shooter. The extra set of controls make it comfortable to shoot in portrait orientation and having the extra battery can make it possible to shoot for long periods without a battery charge or change.

The in-camera settings also make it possible to set your own custom parameters for your partcular shooting situation and having the histogram available for instant feedback makes it that much easier to dial things in on the spot.

Autofocus works well for sports shooting in the AI Servo mode. It's pretty fast and tracks as well as nine focus can be expected to.

The bottom line for me is that compared to my trusty Elan 7e, my output has improved dramatically since owning the 20D. I think this is due to being able to shoot thousands of pictures and have relatively instant feedback which makes the time required to learn much shorter.

Although the 20D performs very well, there are some things that could be improved upon.

For the sports shooter, it would be nice to have more focus points and even better would be the ability to select small groups or clusters of focus points to ensure fewer out of focus shots. I understand the 1D MkII N has 45 focus points and while that would be great, I feel the 20D could be much more effective with a third as many, especially if the user could select small clusters of them as well as single points. This is my only realistic (in my opinion) issue with the performance of the 20D.

In the stock parameters settings, I did have some issues with both blown highlights and dark shadows appearing in high contrast situations which took a great deal of post processing time to correct if it could be done at all. I finally tried my own custom set of parameters, which turned out to be all settings at "0", except for the contrast setting which was set to "-1".

This made it possible to utilize all of the dynamic range available and have far fewer shots with both blown highlights and dark shadows. In other words, exposure was much improved by using my own custom parameter setting.

I have also used the Canon EOS Digital Rebel (300D) which is also capable of excellent output, but it is not as fast or easy to use as the 20D for the sports shooter.

I hoped the 20D would be the right camera to get out of the film SLR world and into the world of DSLR and after 70,000+ shots, I feel I made the right choice.

I have not yet had the opportunity to test Canon's Customer Service Department, but I'll consider that a good thing as the reliability has so far proven to be another strong point of the 20D