Canon EOS 20D - is this review fair?

Skip M wrote:
Interesting stuff...
When I posted opinions like these about a month after the 20D was
released,
I got howled down by the disciples of EOS. Whenever I even
suggested
the hallowed 20D might not be all it's cracked up to be, I get
accused of posting "non scientific" tests. OK...
The 20D is an absolute crap camera from wedding photography when
compared to
Nikon and Fuji cameras. Canon's answer to my complaints is to buy a
1D MkII
or 1Ds because these are "the professional" cameras. That's OK too
except I
bought a 1D MkII last Christmas when the second 20D died and it is
very little different to the 20D. Certainly not $6000 better, if
better at all. Ho, hum... No one cares so why do I? Because it's my
livelihood and
I'm fed
up with the bull**** from Canon and all their puppets. I care that
skin tones are not supposed to look like everyone is suntanned.

Lower the in camera saturation. Or stop shooting Australians, who,
like Californians, have a rather permanent tan... ;-)

I care that when
I rely on the camera's metering, it needs to work. I care that the
$800 Speedlight, heralded as "smart" can't even get the flash
duration right most
of the time... I'd settle for some of the time if it was
predictable.

If you use this with your f2.8 L lenses, you might find that it
works
just fine. And it was predictable, otherwise, always 1-1.3 stops
off.

Thursday last, I jumped ship. True! I ordered up a new Nikon D2X
with
enough
glass and a new speedlight to ensure I'll never be able to afford
to
replace
my car this year (again). I used a demo model for several hours,
side by side with my 20D and 1D before deciding this is "The
Camera"
worth the cost
of changing over to Nikon. It even feels like a real camera instead
of a pretend one like a 20D with "Grip". What a joy that the
speedlight actually
meters properly. How bloody magnificent that a model with one arm,
3
stops away in shadow is the same colour and actually looks like the
colour of her
skin as well.
Good, now maybe you'll stop bitching about Canon stuff, and go take
some pictures.

I better stop slamming canon stuff if I'm to recover any of my
(considerable) investment in it. Yeah... Canon is really fantastic
stuff. Their 25 year inks that last 3 months are well suited to
their cameras which
have a shutter life so short, you really do need to replace the
things every
year for reliability. "Canon Pro Paper" the box said. I know now
any
product
with "Pro" in it's name is aimed at the wannabe market. Yes... I
bought a new r 2400 Epson printer too. It'll go nicely with the new
camera. --
Douglas...

Some thingsnever change. Dooglas still betrays his location at the
center of the Universe: any subject eventually becomes all about him
....

--
Frank ess

"Frank ess" wrote in message
...


Some thingsnever change. Dooglas still betrays his location at the center
of the Universe: any subject eventually becomes all about him ...

--
Frank ess
It's not just the center of the universe thing, it's that his claimed
experience is so counter to what many others have experienced. H and I have
shot weddings for nearly a year with our 20Ds, and, other than the out of
the box problems last September, and that annoying EX underexposure thing,
they've worked flawlessly. And the 24-70 f2.8 L that Douglas claims is so
seriously flawed is, in my experience, stunning. And, by the way, using
f2.8 lenses seems to have solved the underexposure problems, too. His
contention that the problems that one other poster was having with the 20D
and a 70-200 was due to the poor fit of the lens mount on the 20D, when
questioned by me, resulted in an avalanche of name calling and vitriol, when
all I did was advance the thought that, since I had used L lenses (but not
the 70-200) on both 1 series film cameras and the 20D, that his idea may be
wide of the mark. One can't disagree with him, or you are a shill, or
worse.

--
Skip Middleton
http://www.shadowcatcherimagery.com

You've been doing pretty well yourself in the field of navel gazing Frank.
Quick to fire off a retort, slow to respond to questions about your own
geographical centre.

--
Douglas...
"You finally make it on the Internet
when you get your own personal Troll".
Mine's called Chrlz. Don't pat him, he bites!


"Frank ess" wrote in message
...
Some thingsnever change. Dooglas still betrays his location at the
center of the Universe: any subject eventually becomes all about him
...

--
Frank ess

On Sat, 30 Jul 2005 12:16:46 +1000, "pixby"
wrote:

Interesting stuff...
When I posted opinions like these about a month after the 20D was released,
I got howled down by the disciples of EOS. Whenever I even suggested the
hallowed 20D might not be all it's cracked up to be, I get accused of
posting "non scientific" tests. OK...

I guarantee you that no matter what kind of test or how scientific you
make it, if you find fault with them you will be attacked.
"B-but, what was the white balance?"
"Did you use a tripod?!"
"You didn't use the right colour space!"
"If you had used raw, it would be different!!"

Even if you simply let two different manufacturer of cameras take
shots in "auto" mode. All of a sudden, there are excuses for why the
program mode just does not produce the results desired. There are
ALWAYS excuses.

The most desperate one of all, and it comes at the end is, "you must
have gotten a bad one." This is concerning products that are
manfucturered completely by computer and uniformly produced to the
0.001% mark. A "bad" one!
-Rich

On Sat, 30 Jul 2005 00:46:49 +0100, Tony Polson wrote:

"Charles Schuler" wrote:


----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Guest"

"Unfortunately, exposures are not quite as accurate or reliable as we
might expect from an EOS camera. The 20D is prone to slight
underexposure, particularly with wideangle lenses."

Canon engineers chose to err on the side of underexposure as blown
highlights are truly blown and that's a good decision.

In other words, the *real* Canon ISO is not as high as it appears,
meaning that claims of low noise at high ISO are baseless.

No, this can't be implied. Whether the camera underexposes or not is
not logically connected to the ISO sensitivit as such. Indeed, I have
seen reports on the net, at dpreview and elsewhere, that Canon's ISO
numbers actually are slightly _higher_ than stated.

Jan Böhme
Korrekta personuppgifter är att betrakta som journalistik.
Felaktigheter utgör naturligtvis skönlitteratur.

In message ,
Tony Polson wrote:

In other words, the *real* Canon ISO is not as high as it appears,
meaning that claims of low noise at high ISO are baseless.

That may have been somewhat true of the 10D; it metered at ISO 100 like
my Sekonic meter at ISO 64, but my 20D meters the same as the Sekonic.
--


John P Sheehy

In message ,
Jan Böhme wrote:

No, this can't be implied. Whether the camera underexposes or not is
not logically connected to the ISO sensitivit as such.

Yes it is. If the camera is set to ISO 1600, and it's metering for ISO
800, there is nothing 1600 about it, but a lie, and so is the "noise at
ISO 1600".

AFAIAC, the *only* way to compare is to set the same f-stop and shutter
speed, on all cameras compared.

The bottom line is that noise starts as a noise-to-signal ratio of the
sensor, and from there, is increased by digitization errors and
quantization.
--


John P Sheehy

"RichA" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 30 Jul 2005 12:16:46 +1000, "pixby"
wrote:

Interesting stuff...
When I posted opinions like these about a month after the 20D was
released,
I got howled down by the disciples of EOS. Whenever I even suggested the
hallowed 20D might not be all it's cracked up to be, I get accused of
posting "non scientific" tests. OK...

I guarantee you that no matter what kind of test or how scientific you
make it, if you find fault with them you will be attacked.
"B-but, what was the white balance?"
"Did you use a tripod?!"
"You didn't use the right colour space!"
"If you had used raw, it would be different!!"

Even if you simply let two different manufacturer of cameras take
shots in "auto" mode. All of a sudden, there are excuses for why the
program mode just does not produce the results desired. There are
ALWAYS excuses.

The most desperate one of all, and it comes at the end is, "you must
have gotten a bad one." This is concerning products that are
manfucturered completely by computer and uniformly produced to the
0.001% mark. A "bad" one!
-Rich


Then, if he didn't get a bad one, then we got two very good ones, since we
haven't experienced any of the problems he has had with our 20Ds. So which
is it, since they are manufactured to the same tolerances?
--
Skip Middleton
http://www.shadowcatcherimagery.com

"Peter Guest" wrote in message
...
Excerpts from a review of the EOS20D from a leading UK magazine:

"Unfortunately, exposures are not quite as accurate or reliable as we
might expect from an EOS camera. The 20D is prone to slight
underexposure, particularly with wideangle lenses."

Oddly mine in many situations tends to overexpose by about 2/3 stop. My D60
tends to underexpose by the same! Better to get the histogram as far to the
right as possible (without blowing it) to avoid posterisation.

Autofocus: "the camera occasionally appears to disagree with the user
about what is the subject and we found the best way of working is to
switch off the auto AF sensors and select our own using the new toggle
control."

AF sensors can only guess at what you mean and often guess wrong - AI is not
that clever yet. Best way is to select the AF point yourself and in any case
the centre point with an f2.8 or faster lens gives a more accurate AF. I
prefer to shoot with the centre point. You can use the multi-controller to
quickly choose any other point. The multipoints are useful for fast moving
objects, eg flying birds.


"...the extra pixels do make a difference to the potential image
quality, but they also mean that users will have to put a bit more
effort into making the potential image quality the final image
quality. Although it is possible to obtain acceptable results simply
by using in-camera controls for sharpness and contrast, it really is
worth taking the time to process your image post-capture in a decent
software program. If you do this, you will find that the 20D is
capable of quite remarkable results."

I do not know of anyone other than people who have just moved from a P&S who
would expect a done image directly out of the camera to be usable. The
concensus is to shoot RAW and post process and with the 20D this is very
easy since it is fast enough. If you cannot afford a RAW converter there is
the excellent and entirely free RAW Shooter Essentials from Pixmantec.
Canon's DPP is okay but bettered by the others.


FOR: very fast start up; high resolution; massive amount of control.

AGAINST: mirror action noisy; B&w filters not effective; no
spotmetering.

The camera offers a very effective B&W mode. The miorror is noisy but not
that bad. Spot metering would be nice but I do not miss it. Besides there is
so much about the 20D that is good.


Overall Specs 28/30
Build 18/20
Handling 18/20
Performance 27/30

Total: 91%


The 350D got 88% with complaints of image softness "It may be better
than the processor infested 300D but not better than the clarity of
image produced by the 10D".

I can't decide which camera. Comments, please.

In message ,
RichA wrote:

If you were taking a shot of something dark on a light background,
would you just guess and tack up the exposure to compensate?
This is the one thing that might prevent me from buying one.

Why would the 20D be any worse than any other camera for this? It's
probably one of the better DSLRs for dynamic range, because of the
relatively low noise.

It's good that the camera seems to underexpose to preserve
hightlights, but in certain sun-shadow situations, the exposure
difference can be up to 9 f-stops so blowing highlights to obtain
detail in something dark may be the only choice, but you have to be
able to expose for the darker object.

Would you really use the camera's default metering literally for this?
You can see for yourself what the camera really does, and work around
it. Set the contrast to -2 and look at the JPEG in the review. Or
bracket.
--


John P Sheehy