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From:Canon
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User Rating: Amazon Sales Rank:#8428 |
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7 of 7 customers found the following review helpful:
 Worth the step up from the Rebel, 2007-01-16
This camera is certainly worth the step up from the Rebel if you truly want to get serious about photography as a hobby.
- The build of the case is superb
- The ergonomics are excellent, it fits right into your hands and all of the buttons are easily and intuitively accessible while you aim at your subject.
- Camera is large and heavy enough for heavy telephoto lenses, whereas the Rebel feels complete unbalanced
- There are just the right number of wheels/buttons for controlling aperture, shutter speed, metering, and focus points.
- unlike the new Rebel, there is an LCD display on top so that the big screen on the back does not have to turn on to show you the settings.
I am recommending this camera over the rebel for build and ergonomic reasons. If you are going to be taking lots of pictures and putting a lot of effort into them, then this next step is completely worth it.
5 of 6 customers found the following review helpful:
 Good Intermediate DSLR, 2007-01-10
Great Camera - Five Stares - Good build quailty, great photos. Simple to use and explore photography as a art. Takes more than your point and shoot but it's worth it when you get that great shot.
Leses - 2 stars - Skip the 17mm-85mm and 18mm-55mm kits and get a really good all around lense that is forward compatable with a full 35mm CCD - Both kit lenses are EF-S and will not work on the 5D or other full frame DSLR or 35mm film bodies.
Get the body only and the 28mm-135mm lense to start if your new to photography and then go from there. If you are sure photography is for you get the EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM. The kit lenses are not worth the money you spend for them.
8 of 8 customers found the following review helpful:
A Sports Shooter's Dream, 2007-01-04
Both my kids play volleyball and soccer. Soccer is easier to shoot from an available light perspective, harder from a large field to cover with a lens perspective. Volleyball (like basketball) is diabolical from an available light perspective. Indoor gymnasium lights are horrible at best. Setting a "custom white balance" is optimal, although the 20D AWB does pretty well in many gyms. You need to use high ISO settings (typically 1600, sometimes 3200 in a dim gym), and large apertures (f 2.8) to get shutter speeds that begin to freeze the on-court action. It was the shooting demands of indoor volleyball that led me to the Canon 20D. Even at high ISO settings the 20D has acceptably low image noise.
Its second winning attribute is its speed. It has very little shutter lag (~65ms with preset exposure and focus). I briefly owned a Digital Rebel 300D. It's shutter lag was considerably longer. Especially given the 300D lack of a custom function to allow focusing on demand (CF-4 set so '*' button locks focus). This custom function is the secret to shooting action sports. The 20D focuses quickly and on demand. (It focuses much faster than the 300D and orders of magnitude faster than a point 'n shoot digital camera I started with). It has a very fast burst rate of 5 frames/second. (But, don't count on fast bursts to catch the action! Even at 5 fps I have shot sequences in which the ball never appears in any of the frames of a hard driven "spike" in volleyball! The ball enters and exits the frame in < 1/5 of a second! You still have to learn to time your shots for that kind of action.)
I probably should have bought the "body only". The kit lens is useless for indoor sports. I occasionally use it for a large group shot in tight quarters. But for action sports the "kit lens" is virtually useless. It is too slow, and the shrinking aperture as you zoom in, makes it difficult to set a fixed exposure. For volleyball I shoot with two alternate lens, both of which I can highly recommend). I use a Tamaron 28-75 F2.8 when I can get close to the sidelines and a Canon 70-200 F2.8 for when I'm on the end lines or up in the bleachers. Both lens have a constant aperture when zooming. Both lens are relatively "fast lens" that work well under gymnasium lighting conditions.
When I go outdoors the 70-200 with a 1.4x tele-extender becomes my primary shooting setup for soccer.
With the 20D I have taken thousands of sports pictures. I've become the semi-official team photographer for 5 different sports teams. The other parents order prints from my website. "Point and shoot" digital cameras work fine for the "medal ceremonies" and the side-line shots of the fans, and candid shots between matches. But for capturing the action you can't touch a DSLR. I shot one season with a Canon G-3 (a very good point
12 of 12 customers found the following review helpful:
This is a great camera - even for beginners, 2007-01-03
I recently decided to get serious about digital photography when I attempted to photograph my son playing guitar at a concert with a point and shoot digital camera. I missed all of the great shots due to the delay in shooting that is inherent in most point and shoot cameras. I became very interested in a more expensive setup when the Canon Rebel XT had a dramatic price drop to ~$800. But after going to the store and holding it in my hand, it felt way too small and I didn't like the plastic feel of the camera. To help me figure out which camera would be best for me, I determined my main areas of interest for photography and stuck to that while evaluating all possible cameras. My main interests in photography are portraits and my kids' sporting events. Because of this, I knew I needed something with burst capability and a fast write to disk capability, which this camera has. I also wanted easy to access shutter and aperture controls that didn't require me to go into a menu to change - again, this camera is very easy to adjust and use in manual setting with controls for both right on the outside frame of the camera. I'm new to both digital and film photography, but I've been having success in using the manual mode because I've read a couple of books on exposure and the controls on this camera are so easy to use. In terms of support for portraits, I knew I needed a lens that supported an optical range between 85-105mm. That didn't end up affecting my camera body purchase decision.
This is going to sound very superficial, but I really liked the feel of the Canon 20D in my hand. It is not too heavy, and it is very solid. All of the controls are very easy to access and are intuitive. Don't discount the importance of the feel of the camera in your hand. If you do one thing in your search, be sure to go to a store and hold whatever camera you're thinking about purchasing in your hand. Shoot a couple of shots in the store with it. You'll be amazed at your reaction to simply holding the camera in your hand and the impact it can have on you.
I recently joined a photography club at work and about 80% of the people in the club have this exact camera. I purchased this camera before I joined the club. I was amazed. There is a lot of support for new users of this camera in the community - lots of books, videos, and clubs. It's so helpful when you see demos that are based on your exact camera. Don't get me wrong - there is a ton of support for Nikon cameras as well. In fact, Nikon and Canon run neck and neck in terms of quality and continued improvement in their overall camera lines.
I decided not to opt for the Canon 30D because it was more than I really needed, and to be honest, I wanted to save money for some really great lenses. In terms of "glass" recommendations, I bought two lenses to start with - the EFS 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM (for portraits and every day shooting), and you can actually get this lens as an optional kit lens with the Canon 20D. B+H Video in NY offers it with the body as a kit lens and I highly recommend this over the standard poor quality kit lens that is more commonly offered. The other lens I purchased was the EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM for shooting sports. This is such a great lens - I can't say enough positive comments about this lens. Worth every penny. I highly recommend the Speedlite 580EX external flash for great indoor candids and excellent indoor portraits. I point the speedlite at the ceiling and bounce the light to get very natural, diffused lighting. Don't use the built in flash on this camera - it is not going to give you good results. Your shots will look like normal point and shoot pictures if you use the built in flash. Also, get at least a 2 GB memory card - the Ultra II SanDisks are the way to go because they have a fast enough write speed to support shooting sports. I can fit about 450 JPEG-Fine shots on a single disk, which is more than enough for an amateur like me. I'm going to move to RAW pretty soon once I learn the basics of Photoshop Elements 5.0, and I'll probably fit ~30% less shots on the disk, so I'll probably spring for a back up disk.
I've shot at least 4000 shots so far with this camera since purchasing it on Labor Day of 2006 and have had no problems whatsoever. It is a great camera body that I'm sure will serve me well for years to come.
2 of 3 customers found the following review helpful:
Great SLR, 2006-12-25
Basically the 2 biggest SLR manufacturers in this category are Nikon and Canon. While both are great cameras, I ultimately chose the Canon because of the a wider array of lenses. I found that reading camera reviews on Amazon were not as useful looking at sites that were dedicated to digital photography.
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