The good: Excellent low-light performance; fast and responsive; straightforward controls; nice balance of features for both experienced and learning photographers.
The bad: No spot meter; pop-up flash casts shadow with some lenses; viewfinder provides only 95 percent view; average battery life; 1.6X lens-conversion factor.
The bottom line: Though its performance has been surpassed by subsequent models, the Canon EOS 20D remains a top semipro dSLR choice.
Canon has produced a worthy successor to the EOS 10D with this model, endowing it with class-leading 8-megapixel resolution, excellent image quality across a broad range of ISO settings, and fast performance. With a sturdy, well-designed body and an intuitive control layout, the EOS 20D is a pleasure to shoot with. It still lacks a spot meter and isn't without minor flaws, but serious amateurs and pros who need a compact, affordable Canon dSLR should put this camera at the top of their lists. If you'd like to stay closer to the $1000 mark and don't need raw-image-processing software, an optional battery grip, or 8-megapixel resolution, consider Nikon's 6-megapixel D70. Its performance isn't quite as fast as that of the semipro 20D, but it offers the excellent image quality and sophisticated controls that avid photographers demand.
Shooting with the Canon EOS 20D is a pleasure. Its solidly constructed 24-ounce body is nicely compact for an SLR and feels well balanced in the hand. The rubberized grip is comfortable, and all of the controls are easy to reach. I photographed events with the 20D for several hours at a time without feeling any strain. I tried a few different lenses, and with a large 70mm-to-200mm zoom, the body started to feel a little small. Attaching the optional battery grip might be a good way to give it the bulk and weight that will make it a sturdier counterweight to a big lens.
Controls on the front of the 20D body include a button that releases the pop-up flash, the lens-mount release, and a depth-of-field preview button.
Aside from making the EOS 20D slightly more compact than its predecessor, the 10D, Canon has altered the controls slightly. The power control and the command-dial lock are combined on one switch, making room for a little joystick controller that you use to select autofocus points, pan around images in review mode, and shift white balance. I found the controller to be easy to use and precise, despite its small size. If you have large hands, however, you might want to give it a try before you make your purchase.
The large dial on the back works in conjunction with buttons on top of the camera to adjust settings and with the center Set button to navigate LCD menus. The small joystick controller above it lets you shift the white balance, select autofocus points, and pan in review mode.
Since the EOS 20D is fairly compact, there isn't a lot of room for multiple LCDs and rows of dedicated buttons. To change resolution and compression settings, you have to go into the main LCD menu, and the display of current settings is limited to what will fit in the small, top-mounted status screen. This didn't cause any big problems, but I did wish that there were a constant ISO display along with other exposure information, both on the status LCD and in the viewfinder. The 20D is hardly the only SLR that makes this omission, and I think it's a significant oversight. Digital cameras give you the ability to change your ISO setting as often as your shutter speed, so they should also give you a way to keep an eye on your current selection without having to push buttons.
Selections on the left-mounted mode dial include the usual manual and automatic modes, as well as five scene modes, a no-flash mode, and an automatic depth-of-field mode.
Most shooting controls are clustered around the top right of the camera body, where you can reach them without moving your hand too far from the shutter release. The status LCD keeps you apprised of current settings.
I appreciated the simplicity of the EOS 20D's control layout. Most buttons control two settings, each of which can be adjusted with one of two dials. So, for example, when you hold down the ISO/Drive Mode button, you can cycle through the Drive options by spinning the dial on top of the camera and through the ISO settings by spinning the dial on the back. Using the LCD menus is equally straightforward: You open them with the Menu button, scroll through the options with the rear-mounted dial, and make selections with the Set button in the middle of the dial. I like this interface much more than the multiple-button system on the Canon EOS-1D Mark II, which requires too much attention. The only thing that I found slightly awkward was holding down any of the three buttons mounted on top of the camera while turning the top-mounted dial.
The simple, self-explanatory buttons to the left of the LCD give you access to image-review functions. The Jump button skips ahead nine frames.
The Canon EOS 20D offers an excellent feature set for its semipro class, adopting numerous capabilities from the much more expensive EOS-1D Mark II. At the top of its list of new features are an 8.2-megapixel CMOS sensor and Digic II processor for improved performance. The sensor is APS-C-size (22.5mm by 15mm), so you'll need to apply a 1.6X lens-conversion factor. The 20D takes all of Canon's EF and EF-S lenses, and it's compatible with a wide range of EOS flashes and accessories. You can purchase the camera body only or buy it in a kit with the EF-S 18mm-to-55mm, f/3.5-to-f/5.6 lens. Either way, Canon provides a generous software package, including Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0, a panorama-stitching program, a remote-capture program for controlling the camera from a computer, and the excellent Digital Photo Professional 1.2 for processing raw files. The 20D also supports Canon's optional DVK-E2 data verification kit, which allows you--or more likely, your lawyer--to verify image authenticity. To personalize the 20D's controls, there are 18 custom functions available. Canon has made a host of improvements over the EOS 10D. Among the most notable are its top shutter speed of 1/8,000 second, nine-point autofocus, white-balance fine-tuning and bracketing, and black-and-white mode. You can now select the sRGB or Adobe RGB color space independent of the image parameter set. The two standard parameter sets adjust contrast, sharpness, color tone, and saturation for a more or less punchy look, and you can create three custom parameter sets as well. Light sensitivity ranges from ISO 100 to ISO 3,200, and noise reduction is selectable.
Metering options include evaluative, center-weighted, and partial. Flash metering is improved, with Canon's E-TTL II system, and there's a flash-exposure lock as well. Unfortunately, Canon decided against adding spot metering to the 20D, but for most purposes, the partial metering will suffice. It covers 9 percent of the viewfinder image, the approximate area of which is marked with a circle on the focusing screen. The screen itself is new, and although it's quite good, I think it would have been a nice touch for Canon to implement interchangeable screens. You can select three types of autofocus: One Shot; Predictive AI Servo for tracking moving subjects; and AI Focus, which automatically switches between the two other modes, depending on whether anything in your scene is moving.
For those times when you'd rather let the camera do the thinking, there are five scene modes available via the mode dial (the no-flash mode doesn't quite qualify as a scene mode in my book), along with a fully automatic mode. There's also an automatic depth-of-field mode, which ensures that everything in the area of your image covered by the autofocus points is sharp. The 20D also supports the PictBridge and Canon Direct Print standards.
A voice-annotation feature and automatic sensor cleaning would have been useful additions to this camera--next time, Canon?
The included BP-511A 1,390mAh lithium-ion cell provides good but not outstanding battery life.
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