PCPhoto

Short Report: Canon EOS 20D

A lightweight digital SLR offers top-level sensor performance

By Rob Sheppard, Photography by Rob Sheppard

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Yes, the Canon EOS 20D has 8.2 megapixels, and everyone keys in on that impressive number, but megapixels aren’t everything. The quality of an image coming off of a sensor is strongly affected by the sensor design itself as it, in turn, affects noise, color and tonal range. The Canon EOS 20D features superb results for all of these points.

The EOS 20D offers one of the cleanest image files we’ve seen available from any digital camera, let alone one at this price. The real test of a camera’s sensor comes with night and low-light photography, however. I took this camera out on the town in New York City and was very pleased with the results. I could use a slower zoom lens, boost the ISO to 400, 800, and even 1600, and still see excellent images.

Night shooting has become much easier today with digital cameras because you can set the white balance to match the conditions, use higher ISO settings, shoot without the reciprocity failure problems of film, and see the results immediately on your LCD. It’s easy to misjudge night exposure on an LCD panel, so I always use the histogram to be sure I have enough exposure. Even with images as clean as those from the EOS 20D, you keep noise to a minimum by ensuring your dark areas aren’t too far to the left side of the histogram.

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