Canon 20D: Raising the Bar for Prosumer Digital SLRs
by Stephen Caston on November 11, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Digital Camera
Final Words
With the 20D, Canon has taken a great camera and made it even better. The 20D shares a very similar look to the 10D in a slightly smaller and lighter body. The new camera features a 1.9 megapixel advantage over the 10D and has an EF-S lens mount that accepts Canon's new wide angle EF-S lenses as well as a plethora of existing EF lenses. Other than some minor updates to the controls and body, the real improvements are in its performance.In our review, we discovered that the 20D is much faster than the 10D. From the moment the power switch is flipped, the 20D is ready to shoot. The new 9-point auto-focus system proves to be speedier than the 7-point system on the 10D. Despite producing larger average files than the 10D, the 20D is able to clear its buffer to the flash card at significantly faster speeds. The 20D improves on the 10D's continuous drive capability as well. The 10D can shoot 9 JPEG files at 3 fps while the 20D can shoot approximately 20 at 5 fps. We found that the most significant advantage of the 20D is its ability to clear its buffer quickly. When we filled each camera's buffer, the 20D was able to clear it in 14.2 seconds while it took the 10D 59.9 seconds. After shooting with the speedy 20D for a while, going back to the 10D seemed almost painfully sluggish. The 10D will not allow you to view previously taken pictures or change menu settings until all images have been cleared from the buffer. In contrast, the 20D gives priority to user input.
The 20D's white balance performance is very similar to the 10D. Both cameras show a bit of a yellowish cast with Auto WB in tungsten light, although the 20D is just slightly better. Also, the 20D seems to produce images that are a bit brighter than the 10D. In sunlit shots, both cameras prove to have outstanding color reproduction. One downside of the 20D is that we found it to underexpose images taken with the built-in flash compared to the 10D. However, this can always be worked around with some exposure compensation. We would have like to see the 20D provide a larger dynamic range than the 10D. Unfortunately, if it does have a larger dynamic range, it is a fairly small difference as we were unable to notice it.
For anybody looking for a good reason to get into the digital SLR scene, the 20D is an excellent choice. At a price of $1500 for the body and an extra $100 for the kit lens, the 20D is an amazing value. The question of whether to upgrade becomes a very hard question for current 10D and Digital Rebel owners. Regarding image quality, the biggest advantage is the 20D's ability to shoot low noise images at ISO 3200. This provides the opportunity to handhold indoor and low light shots without using a flash. The other really big advantage of the 20D is its super fast performance. If you find the "busy" screen on the 10D and Digital Rebel as annoying as we do, it just might be worth the upgrade. Until full frame Digital SLRs become much more affordable, it's not going to get much better than this.
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Thanks again to Newegg.com for loaning us the Canon 20D Kit for review.
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shuttleboi - Monday, November 15, 2004 - link
What exactly is the point of these camera reviews? As I wrote several months ago, Anandtech is a gadget/hardware site, not a photography site. If you want to reach the photography community (like the rich folk who hang around DPReview.com, spending $1000 a month on lenses, and are ready to click on lots of advertisers' banners), you should do something novel. I suggested reviewing portable photo storage devices (e.g. the Epson P-2000, Archos AV-480, and Nikon ), but nobody listened to me. Suit yourself. As soon as you review any of these gadgets, you will find yourself on DPReview.com, gizmodo.com, and other popular sites. But don't listen to me, I'm just a yuppie male, age 28-40, making a good salary; it's not like your advertisers care about my demographic or anything.Joony - Friday, November 12, 2004 - link
I love my 20D, check out my photogallery,http://www.pbase.com/joony
Gatak - Thursday, November 11, 2004 - link
You may also want to look at the DCRAW - Digital Camera RAW. It is a open source program for reading RAW files from most camera RAW files.DCRAW vs. Canon D60: http://www.aim-dtp.net/aim/digicam/dcraw/
DCRAW vs. Canon 10D: http://www.insflug.org/raw/analysis/dcrawvsfvu/
DCRAW source: http://www.cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/
Windows binary: http://home.arcor.de/benjamin_lebsanft/
stephencaston - Thursday, November 11, 2004 - link
Woodaddy, thanks for your comments. A Canon 50mm f/2.5 Macro lens was used for all the tests except on page 11 (where each picture lists the lens used beneath the thumbnail). I've also amended the other image quality pages to indicate the use of the 50mm. Sorry for this oversight.WooDaddy - Thursday, November 11, 2004 - link
I missed something critical here. Let me know if it was posted. What lens are you using? Since DSLRs have interchangable lenses, the image quality is directly related to the lens used. If not listed, you really want to say that for reference in you image quality tests.#8, #3 I've picked on Stephen when he first got started on his reviews. He's getting better and IMO he's doing a great job. Now mind you, dpreview is for photogs/techies with an emphasis on photogs. AT is the converse; techies/photogs. I would consider ease of use and image quality and control to be a focus in a review at dpreview. Technical features would be the focus at AT....
Personally, I'm a photog more so than a techie camera guy. I'm doing quite well with my Nikon FE2 manual camera (with Acer 2740s film scanner) and Minolta G400 backup.
AtaStrumf - Thursday, November 11, 2004 - link
Wau, this thing makes some great pics! Way too expensive though.Gatak - Thursday, November 11, 2004 - link
#3 Yes dpreview has many good articles. But I think this is a good start anyway. Dpreview is very technical and doesn't really provide much explanation of technical stuff. This is something I think Anandtech could advance in =) It is possible to have technical depth and yet have good, easy to understand explanations.ProviaFan - Thursday, November 11, 2004 - link
#4 - that's why we have the term "prosumer". It's (the 20D) better than consumer, which would be the digital rebel, but it's not in the league of 1D Mark II (even though it has the same resolution, the speed and build quality don't compare) or 1Ds - which are professional.stephencaston - Thursday, November 11, 2004 - link
#4, The 20D is often referred to as a Prosumer camera. Among the reasons are price, 1.6x cropping factor, sealing, built-in flash, and _optional_ battery grip.The 20D is aimed at amateur photographers looking to replace/supplement their existing film SLR or for those looking to upgrade from a non-SLR camera. I've also heard of pros buying 10D and 20D bodies as backup cameras. I don't think it would be fair to the 1D line to call the 20D a professional camera. It is very nice, but not quite pro ;-)
sjprg - Thursday, November 11, 2004 - link
Nice article, I use both a 10D and a 20D and would like to see some ACR tests added to the CPU processing tests besides the emphasis on games to assist us in selecting the best hardware for processing digital images. One of the test that could be used is the Tom Fors ACR calibrator beta 3.http://fors.net/scripts/ACR-Calibrator/