Canon's EOS 20D Camera

By David Em

June 6, 2005

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Seven years ago good digital cameras cost tens of thousands of dollars. On the low end, you could buy a 2 megapixel camera with dismal light sensitivity and lots of shutter lag for between five and eight hundred bucks. There was nothing in between.

Now there's a staggering array of choices that vary from pro models in the $6000 to $8000 range, rugged enough to survive in a war zone while transmitting photographs to a satellite, down to units that cost under a hundred bucks and are attached to a keychain.

Today we also have an impressive group of cameras that offer extremely good image quality and professional features such as interchangeable lenses and remote flash controls. Canon's $1500 EOS 20D is the best camera in this class we've tested so far.

A Great Body

The 20D is an update to Canon's earlier 10D, with higher resolution and a slightly lighter and more streamlined body. Its overall design derives from classic 35 mm film cameras. This will please experienced shooters, who are very particular about look and feel. For example, I know several professional photographers s who who rejected Nikon's D70 in favor of the earlier and less capable D100 simply on the basis of how it felt when they handled it. The 20D passes this test easily: it definitely looks and feels like a "real" camera.

The 20D's magnesium alloy body and stainless steel chassis are very solid, and at approximately two pounds without lens or battery, it's also light. It's not as ruggedized or weatherproofed as some models that cost four or five times as much, such as Canon's own 1Ds MarkII, but its light weight makes it much easier to lug around and handle in the field. There are many subtle body design features such as the sliding cover on the CF media card compartment, an improvement over the rubberized ones Canon uses on many of its other models.

The 1.8-inch 118,000-pixel TFT LCD screen is fine, but I find that with this design of camera I exclusively use the optical viewfinder for shooting, as opposed to pocketable "glamcams" that are hard to hold up to your eye without mashing your nose (they often don't even have viewfinders in the first place).

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