Canon EOS 20D

Reviewed July 2005

Test Photos

STILL LIFE PHOTO

This subject is photographed in a room that has a mix of fluorescent and incandescent light, but which is not brightly lit. The camera's flash is used to add fill light. The backdrop is 1.95 m (6.5 ft) from the camera.

The photos presented in this section were all captured using the 18-55 mm EF-S lens included with the basic EOS 20D kit.

Both of the photos for the Still Life section of this page are captured using the RAW image format, and adjusted for colour, brightness and contrast before being opened in Photoshop CS2.

ZOOM PHOTO

Now we zoom in on a specific area. The intent is to test the sharpness of the image at the zoom's maximum setting. The camera remains at the same distance as with the preceding photo.

The advantage of the RAW format is not that it offers a greater level of detail than the JPEG format. With a camera such as this, the JPEG format is excellent and has no artefacts. Instead, the value of the RAW format is that it allows tweaking the image colour very precisely, ensuring that a series of images captured at different focal lengths, or even with different lenses, can be adjusted so that they all share the same overall colour tones.

MACRO PHOTO

Using the 18-55mm lens, the EOS 20D is able photograph a subject positioned 28 cm from the focal plane — the surface of the CMOS sensor — at the full zoom position. For close-up shots at the minimum distance, the lens is best manually focused, as the auto focus can have difficulty focusing settling at the minimum focus point.

From this distance, the camera captures a field of view of 6.7 cm (2.6 inches) and the image shows an excellent level of detail, as can be seen below.

BUILDING PHOTO

This image is our outdoor test. The architecture of the building, in particular the angled girders, immediately shows the presence of jaggies. The shadowed entrance can also often reveal the quality of the exposure.

With the 18-55mm lens set to the widest angle, the EOS 20D yields a clean image that has no trace of chromatic aberration nor any noticeable distortion with this subject.

Although the 18-55mm kit lens tends to produce a softer image at the wide angle end than at the telephoto end, a fact that the Program mode has used a smaller aperture with this photo means that the overall image sharpness is quite good.

ZOOM PHOTO

Zooming in on the entrance of the building, the shadowed entrance takes on a greater importance for the metering and can cause an overexposure of sections that are directly lit.

With a 55mm maximum focal length, the kit lens provides a focal length comparable to an 88mm lens on a 35mm film camera. The field of view the lens captures is rather large, encompassing a large section of the sunlit front of the building. The exposure, however, is very good and takes the shadowed entrance area into account, capturing some of the interior items.

NIGHT PHOTO

Since this camera is capable of long exposures, a photo taken at night is included here.

The EOS 20D is a superbly capable camera for long exposures. It provides a maximum timed exposure of 30 seconds, and an unlimited exposure time with the Bulb mode, although that mode is best used with the optional remote control. Moreover, the 20D provides a custom function to lock up the mirror prior to any long exposure, preventing it from inducing a vibration into the image as it flips up at the start of the exposure.

The photo presented here is captured with the 18-55mm lens, at the 55mm end. An exposure of 30 seconds is used and an aperture of f9. The image the EOS 20D is totally noise-free, even at 200 ISO, and is very sharp, as can be seen by the fact that railings of the bridge are clearly visible.