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Published: January 18th 2006
Bagpuss
Canon EOS 20D and friendsA small but regularly increasing number of people have asked questions about what camera I am using for the photos on travelblog. To save myself time in trying to answer everyone individually I decided to add this blog. Hopefully people who are considering travelling might find it of some use.
Due to what looks like a size limit on travelblog I've added this as two separate blogs. The first concentrates on gear, the second on aspects of taking a camera travelling with you, plus our experiences with shooting underwater with a digicam. I've also added some links to good photographers near the bottom of the second blog, so if you just like looking at pretty pictures try out this section.
I would add the major caveat that I am self-taught and no expert, and so the opinions offered here are entirely my own and may well not be correct. Also, please don't assume I'm religiously devoted to Canon or Nikon or whoever, or to film or digital. I just want to take nice photos. Within that the camera is a tool which you have to learn and to which you have to adapt, nothing more.
Should people wish to add information, comments or suggestions that would be greatly appreciated. I will add anything useful sent by private email to the text, crediting appropriately.
The Gear
Here is comprehensive list. Note that the EOS 20D has a 1.6x 'crop factor' so the effective focal lengths of the lenses whilst on the 20D are in brackets after the lens names.
- Canon EOS 20D 8mp DSLR
- Canon EF 17-40L (27.2 - 64)
- Canon EF 50 1.4 (80)
- Canon EF 70 - 300 DO IS (112 - 480)
- Canon Speedlite 580EX external flash unit
- 4 x Lexar 80x 1GB compact flash cards
- Cheap Manfrotto Tripod
- Transcend 40GB Photobank plus charger.
- Hoya UV filters and Polarizer filters for 58mm and 77mm thread
- Hoya 81B warm-up filter for 58mm thread
- Cokin P slot-in filter system
- Assorted filters (Neutral Density (ND), ND Grads, Warm ups, blue and orange
- Manual for EOS 20D
- 7 BP511 batteries (cheap non-Canon variety)
- Two sets of 4x Powerex AA Nimh 2200 mAh rechargeable batteries
- Battery chargers for above.
- Giotto 'Rocket' air blaster
- 3x assorted lens cleaning cloths, all now very grubby.
- Inca lenspen for lens cleaning (bought in Namibia)
- Sandisk USB flash card reader
- Billingham 335 Khaki Camera Bag (shoulder, 2 SLRS+lenses)
- Lowepro TLZ1 toploader camera bag (1SLR)
- Lowepro bag for single telephoto lens
- "One Polar" camera rucksack (copy of Lowepro Orion Trekker (?) - bought in China)
- Tamrac and Oyster filter holders
- 2x80 Litre waterproof sacs.
- Pacsafe steel mesh with lock
- Canon Powershot S1 IS
- WP-DC20 waterproof case for above (bought in Singapore)
- Lensmate filter attachment and 52mm UV filter
- Lowepro camera Bumbag.
- Ricoh GR1s film camera plus case.
- Several rolls of Fuji 800 colour negative film
The Gear, in detail
Canon EOS 20D 8mp DSLR
Canon's widely praised 20D came out around October last year (2004). Currently it sits at the top of Canon's range of amateur DSLR's. It is my first DSLR.
For readability, this is a summary list of the good/bad points. These points are listed again in more detail at the end of this blog entry.
Good points
- Fairly solid and robust build.
- Excellent control layout.
- Low noise up to ISO 1600 with ISO 3200 acceptable in many cases.
- Black and White mode.
- Dual RAW and JPEG mode.
- Excellent flash exposures with E-TTL II.
Bad points
- Low dynamic range.
- Bad Exposure algorithms.
- Poor colour saturation.
- Can't create prints larger than ~A4 at 300 dpi
- Mirror lock-up is not easily accessible in the menus and difficult to use.
- There is no cover provided for the LCD panel - Nikon provide one on the D70.
Canon EF 17-40L f4.0
This wide-angle zoom lens is from Canon's L series i.e. their best lenses. To be honest I struggle to fault it much. It is certainly robust, having survived a few falls including one from the top bunk of a Trans-Siberian train. At the wider angles it is very sharp - I tested it on an EOS 3 with Velvia against a Sigma 24mm prime lens and I couldn't spot any discernable difference. It is supposed to be less sharp at the 40mm end but to be honest I've not noticed. It is reasonably fast, with a maximum aperture of f4 throughout the range. Most of all, for a lens of this quality, it is priced very competitively, particularly if you shop around. Mine was actually bought in Singapore with an international warranty.
Canon EF 50 f1.4
This is Canon's standard test lens. I bought it for available light portraits ... the 50mm focal length translates to 80mm on a 1.6 crop factor camera and the very wide maximum aperture of 1.4 allows for shooting in very low light without a flash, particularly if combined with the higher ISO settings on the 20D. The lens is small, very light and fairly sturdy, although I wouldn't fancy its chances much if dropped. The lens is much sharper than the two zooms, but as it is a fixed focal length that is to be expected. The results general show good colours and contrast. However it is a difficult lens to use, particularly because the wider apertures can lead to a very shallow depth of field. Additionally, if you are used to the luxury of zoom lenses for composing your photographs, having to start moving your feet like Muhammed Ali to get the right composition will not come naturally at all. I've often got my best results from the lens by just setting the camera to
and concentrating on taking the shot. The other issue is that 80mm is still a bit too short for taking travel photographs of only partially willing subjects in some far-off country. Sticking the camera right in their face can work in your favour if they are in a good mood, as a certain amount of hilarity is likely to ensue - as in "Happy Mongolia."
- but for shy subjects it is perhaps a little too intrusive. I'm in two minds about this lens - quality wise it is the best of the three by far but it is the one I use the least.
Canon EF 70 - 300 DO IS f3.5 - 5.6
This lens is one of the most controversial in Canon's line-up. If you want to take high quality travel photos with a telephoto lens you are a bit knackered it seems. At the cheap end Canon's 75-300 range is not renowned for being all that sharp, and neither are the alternates/competitors. At the high end, the excellent L series lenses might provide you with the quality and stability you need, but they are too large and heavy to be feasible for backpacking, the other factor being that if you take out one of these giant lenses out in a crowded market place in India it is likely to take you several weeks to shake off the fascinated and/or suspicious locals.
The DO IS is Canon's attempt to bridge the gap - a small if heavy lens that is designed to give results close to the top end L lenses. To do this they have used 'diffractive optics', the DO in the title. The idea, I think, is that a front lens element contains a diffraction grating that somehow alters the optical properties of the incoming light so that a sharper lens can be made in a smaller package. There are some downsides to this, which you can read in any of the many reviews on the internet, but on the whole they seem to have delivered. Many of the problems cited are easy to work around in the field, the only problem being the lens tends not to deliver the best contrast/colours in dull light.
The IS stands for image stabiliser. This is an increasingly standard mechanism to combat camera shake and seems to work very well. If you are careful you can get reasonably sharp hand-held photos at 1/30th at 300m (effective focal length of 480mm on the EOS 20D). However for sharp photos you probably don't want to go below say 1/200th at 300mm.
I've got some pretty nice photos with this lens, but sadly after only 8 months it is now at the camera clinic. It is a very sick puppy. The technician has told me that these high quality telephoto zoom lenses are very fragile and susceptible to wear and tear, regardless of who makes them (Canon, Nikon etc). The problem is that to get the quality they have to pack in a lot of heavy glass into a lens assembly that really can't take the weight very well. A slight knock or a year of solid use and the zoom mechanism can either jam up, as with my lens, or wear out. Obviously I'm pretty unhappy about this - the RRP of the lens was more than 1000 gbp, although I paid a lot lot less by getting it from the US with a strong pound.
Lens Selection
How does my lens selection line up for travelling? Well, as I said the 17-40L is excellent, and if it were a bit more robust I would say the same about the 70-300 DO IS. In hindsight I might replace the 50 1.4 with a medium-telephoto prime lens, perhaps with a macro function. The extra focal length would mean I don't have to get quite as close to the subject to fill the frame, and the macro function would open up the artistic possibilities that 1:1 magnification would give on a rainy day with nothing much to do. This of course would be at the expense of size and weight. The other issue is that macro photography is particularly engrossing and time consuming, requiring a tripod and lots of patience.
I would prefer to have a wider-angle option than simply 28mm, particularly for all the lovely architecture we are seeing. I've come close to buying the EFS 10-22mm but it seems overpriced for the quality it offers and it will only work on 1.6 crop factor digital cameras. I decided better to learn to get good pictures with 28mm maximum rather than confuse myself further by having a still wider option available.
Many amateur Canon users who have moved from film cameras will have the reliable old EF 28-135 IS. I sometimes wonder if I should be carrying one of these (there is an EFS equivalent also). Relatively cheap and delivering satisfactory quality this seems to be an ideal 'walking around' lens, the 28-135 translating to 45 - 216 on a 20D, with image stabilisation thrown in. I probably would benefit from having one, although that again is more space and weight, but I haven't got one so never mind.
It would be nice to have lots of lovely Canon L telephoto lenses also, but my kit is big enough and heavy enough for backpacking as it is - these things really aren't travel lenses for anyone other than dedicated professionals and amateurs targeting a niche - sports or wildlife for example.
Since writing this Canon have announced
two new lenses, a 24-105 IS L and a new 70-300 IS to replace the old and weary 75-300 IS at the mid-price end of the market. I would expect the former to be an excellent lens, although I would imagine the price/zoom range would prove unattractive for a 1.6 crop camera. Hopefully the 70-300 IS will prove sharper than its predecessor and reduce the need to spend the extra for the 70-300 DO IS, although physics is physics and I suspect there is a limit to what Canon or anybody can produce at the 300gbp price point.
Canon Speedlite 580 Ex
This flash unit has performed pretty much as expected (after some experience with the on-camera flash) and has helped produced some nice shots I wouldn't have gotten otherwise - "I guess it beats programming for a living" for example.
. Bouncing the flash of the walls or ceiling of a room also tends to result in quite pleasing results, but is very limited given your subject needs to be in an appropriately sized room, preferably with white walls and ceiling. I've also noticed that if you can get away without flash generally that is better, particularly if the flash is pointing straight at the subject, as this latter case destroys all the shadows and you get a very flat result - those high ISO settings proving useful again. The other thing I've realised is that flash photography can be a very complex art. Obtaining the simple results I am getting is now easy with E-TTL II (the second generation of through-the-lens flash algorithms .. note that E-TTL I didn't work well with digital cameras) but this portable lightsource appears to capable of so much more I feel as if I have only scratched the surface. I'll get those strobe shots working one day!
4 x Lexar 80x 1GB compact flash cards
1GB as each RAW file for the 20D is 8mb. 80x speed because I wanted to be able to upload as many cards as possible before the battery on my portable hard disk needed recharging. Only problem with 1GB is that CDs only hold 700mb which means you cannot burn a card to a single CD. Roll on DVD burners (thanks James). After losing two sets of shots in Africa due to confusing unlabelled cards, they are now labelled "Aardvark", "Eagle", "Lion" and "Ratty".
Note a problem has been noted with exactly this combination of compact flash cards and camera but only when shooting in RAW+JPEG as I am doing. Apparently you can lose images, although this has not yet happened to me. There is a software update to the EOS 20D available from to download from Canon.
Cheap Manfrotto Tripod
This cheap (<100gbp) tripod just about works ok, although it is beginning to struggle now with all the sand and grit it has been through. It is light enough to carry around (about 2kg) but sturdy enough to cope with the Canon equipment. Just. I actually struggle to get a sharp shot using the 70-300 DO IS ... the tripod can't really cope. I'd love to have a more sturdy one but there is no way I could really carry it along with all the backpacking gear.
What does a tripod give you ? Well, all those nice night shots, cityscapes, sunsets and of course that nice ethereal blurry effect on waterfalls and the sea. If you are taking a digicam with you make sure you take a mini-tripod and learn how to make use of it - they're available cheaply in most photography shops these days - just make sure it is sturdy enough to hold your digicam securely.
Transcend 40GB Photobank
This neat little package contains a 1.8" 40GB Hitachi hard disk and several card reader interfaces. You plug your flash card in and upload direct to the hard disk. 40GB lasted me 11 weeks through Africa, including space to upload some other peoples photos, and it has lasted the three months or so from Estonia to Melbourne. It plugs in to XP based machines no problem, and we've even manged to get it talking to Linux, although no Linux drivers are supplied. The interface is very simple - no colour screen - pretty much all you can do is upload and download, but that is all I need. I can recommend Transcend and their UK agents Orca, both of whom have been very helpful with technical questions when needed. At the time I bought it the 40GB drive turned out to be one of the smaller and cheaper units on the market. The rechargeable battery can be replaced when it has died by unscrewing the case, voiding the warranty, but of course the battery should last through the warranty period no problems.
The main problem here is all eggs are in one basket. If the disk fails, and hard disks do fail - it has happened to me three times in my life, that's it. All the photos are gone. Same problem if it is stolen, but you have the same issue with film. We bought a nice tupperware container in an African supermarket and the disk now lives in that to protect it from dust and water. I try to avoid using it when in high temperatures and generally try to treat it with kid gloves.
A helpful chap from the Wan Chai camera club showed me his Epson P-2000 which is also 40GB but has a large screen on which to view the photos. He was showing me his piccies of Hong Kong, whereas I was just looking at the quality and performance of the P-2000, both of which looked pretty good. It also supports common RAW formats so you can view these directly without having to look at a low-res jpg image. This box looks an ideal tool for long-term travellers, if you are prepared to take the 'eggs in one basket' risk.
Filters
Apart from the usual standard selection of screw-in UV filters (to protect the lens surface) and circular polarisers (to reduce reflections and increase the intensity of blue sky) the rest of my filters are of the slot-in plastic-type used in the Cokin-P system. This system is the main affordable way for amateurs to get their hands on the filters they need for decent landscape photography. I would love to have a more professional system but no way can I afford it.
The good thing about such a slot in filter system is you only need one filter holder and then several screw in adaptors for each lens in your kit. The adaptors are dirt cheap, so you don't need to spend a fortune reproducing each filter for each different lens thread.
What filters do I use?
*
Neutral Density Graduates (ND Grads) Very simply, these are dark at the top and clear at the bottom, with a gradation in-between. The neutral density bit means they are grey i.e. they have no (primary) colour associated with them and shouldn't alter the colours of the image. The purpose is very simple - the dark bit goes over the sky and the light bit over the land, the result being the bright sky is dimmed so that whole frame can be taken within the dynamic range of the film/sensor. It is a similar effect to looking through your car windscreen when driving - ever noticed the dark strip at the top? This graduation from dark to light leads to more detailed, more colourful and often more dramatic skies without the loss of detail in the land. They are pretty much essential for landscape photography and almost all serious landscape photographers use them. Normally you would only use them on a tripod shot but given the narrow dynamic range of the 20D sensor I have taken to using them on hand-held snapshots just to balance the shot up a little. This photo of Long Lake in Jiuzhaigou National Park
is a slightly unusual and only partially successful attempt at using ND Grads handheld, but believe me the result is vastly better than I could get from the 20D without using one. A better alternative for this image would have been to shoot two exposures from a tripod, exposing one for the sky and one for the foreground. These two images could then be selectively merged in Photoshop to give a result with a wider dynamic range - but of course this all takes time.
*
Neutral Density filters These are as above, but they are dark all the way down. The primary use is to achieve long exposures in bright lighting conditions e.g. when taking a picture of a waterfall during the day. You might want the water to blur so you need a long exposure - bung in an ND filter.
*
Warm up filters This type simulates the effect of warm sunlight. They are essentially different strengths of golden orange. They are also useful to balance out the blue cast that is found in midday sunlight for example. Your eye doesn't notice this as it automatically adjusts but transparency film cannot. Care is needed with negative prints and with auto-white balance on digital cameras. Use of either can lead to adjustment of the colours to negate the effect of the filter (so that white appears white, not slightly golden). I've rarely used my warm-up filters but probably should have done so a bit more - I've noticed cloudy skies at sunset can lead to a blueish cast over the land, something a warm-up filter can counteract - or maybe use a blue filter to enhance.
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Blue and Orange filters For a bit of fun I included my blue and orange filters. Whilst the orange has never really been of much use (note you can get graduated orange filters to enhance sunsets - now that really is cheating) the blue has helped achieve a cold, ethereal effect on one or two shots.
Manual for EOS 20D
Always take your camera manual. You never know when you'll need it. When you buy your camera read it through from cover to cover at least once.
7xBP511 batteries
There are lots of cheap places to buy copy batteries on the internet. Try
7DayShop] but be wary, if they run out of stock they might forget your order and you might need to chase them - otherwise they are good and cheap.
I ended up with 7 batteries which gives me lots of power on long treks. Before visiting Africa we had no idea how easy it would be to charge batteries but most campsites had some facilities. The worst place so far has been Mongolia, but again there were possibilities to charge every few days or so. It will be interesting to see how we cope on some of the longer treks coming up, most particularly in Nepal.
Generally speaking I get 1-2 days use out of a battery with the 20D which is plenty. We spend a lot of time reviewing on-screen, partly because we're carrying so many batteries. SLR's tend to be more conservative on battery use than digicams as the viewfinder is optical and there is no option to use the LCD to compose the photo.
Two sets of 4x Powerex AA Nimh 2200 mAh rechargeable batteries
These are for the Powershot S1 IS which uses batteries pretty heavily. They're a good brand. Nimh seems to be the thing to use - see
Steve's Digicams Giotto 'Rocket' air blaster
The
Giotto Rocket can be used for cleaning the digital sensor and is recommended by
Andy Rouse. Seems to work in removing large dust particles from the sensor, possibly at the expense of blowing smaller particles onto the sensor but these are much harder to see unless using a very small aperture. Also useful for getting the worst of the crap of your lens/filter before wiping it with a cloth or a lenspen.
3x assorted lens cleaning cloths, all now very grubby.
These have been borrowed by other camera users more often than any other bit of equipment I own. Do take one. Really.
Lenspen
I bought this in Swapokmund, Namibia, when the cloths were struggling with all the dust around. It cost a lot of money (US $20). It worked well for a little while, then the cleaning pad fell off, so I'm just left with an expensive lens brush. To be honest I'd go with some lens clothes and a small bottle of cleaning fluid for those cases when things get really grubby. Note that ethanol shouldn't be used on coated lenses as apparently it destroys the coating.
Sandisk USB flash card reader
Might be useful if you're having trouble getting the Transcend disk talking to an old computer in an internet cafe.
Billingham 335 Khaki Camera Bag
Billingham are renowned as the Rolls-Royce of camera bags. You regularly see 20 year old Billinghams without a mark on them going for big money on Ebay. I didn't choose Billingham for that. My decision process was: I like having my camera on my shoulder, where it is easily accessible, rather than in a backpack. I am going to take two SLR's to Africa with me - one film (EOS 3) and one digital (EOS 20D). Nuffid Neil had told me once I started shooting digital I wouldn't shoot film and he was right, but I didn't listen to him and took two cameras anyway. The only shoulder bag sensibly big enough but not too big that I could find on the market anywhere was the 335. It had the other benefit that, being a kind of British Raj Khaki, rather than the Professional Black Lowepro look, it might not be as obvious as a camera bag to those who haven't seen Billingham before. Plus, Michael Palin took a Billingham bag round the Himalayas with him (I think).
So how has it performed ? Well, with 2 SLR's in plus three lenses I can just about carry it. With 1 SLR (I ditched the EOS 3 after Africa) it is bearable but you notice it on your shoulder. Still, it has been up some steep old places.
The stitching on the first bag came undone whilst in Africa. After dealing with the appalling Billingham distributors in the UK, the admirable people at
Robert White got onto them and got me a new one. This is doing better, although the padding on the shoulder strap is already wearing through. One futher rather major flaw is the zip, which runs across the top of the bag. It is a very nice zip and will probably last for centuries, but it has scratched the LCD panel of the 20D rather badly. Now I know the 335 was designed along time before digital cameras with LCD panels on the back, but this is frustrating nonetheless. I now keep the 20D in the Lowepro toploader bag inside the Billingham, to ensure no more scratches.
The Tibetans in the west of China were well impressed with the Billingham, particularly the high quality leather bits. I am less so. In my opinion they are overpriced, the service in the UK is appalling and from my experience the quality is not as high as the reputation. If you really want this type of 'old colonial' bag try looking in hunting and fishing outlets in the UK, where imitations are sold for around half the price. They don't include the internal padding but I'm sure that can aquired very cheaply, and they don't carry the name. Otherwise they seem to be the real deal.
Lowepro TLZ1 toploader camera bag (1SLR)
A bag for a single SLR plus lens. I used it primarily for keeping the camera safe in a rucksack whilst trekking. Does what it is supposed to and useful to have with you.
Lowepro bag for single telephoto lens
As above but for the 70-300 DO IS
"One Polar" camera rucksack
This was a great buy. It is a copy of Lowepro Orion Trekker bought in China for 15 gbp. I'd never liked the design of these until I used one. It is just big enough to get my SLR, three lenses and flash, plus a few little bits and bobs, in the padded section in the bottom. There is room in the top to fit a waterproof bag, some clothes, and any other camera bits and bobs. Sunscreen and mozzie repellent go in the external side pockets, and the tripod fits on the back. You can open the bag to get at the camera without detaching the tripod - very important. The main downsides - nowhere sensible to put a camelback bladder for carrying water (but neither has the Billingham) and no easy way to put a waterproof liner inside the whole bag (although the middle compartement divider unzips so you could in fact line the entire rucksack if you wanted to). Having this available has made life an awful lot easier and there is a small possibility the Billingham may be taking the slow boat back to the UK before long.
Tamrac and Oyster filter holders
Nice holders for square Cokin filters and the Lexar memory cards. The Oyster is better than the Tamrac, and I found that the ND Grads kept getting scratched for some reason, so now they are kept in the bulky plastic containers they arrived in.
2x80 Litre waterproof sacs
A christmas present from Kim's brother and his partner, these things have been godsends and not just for cameras. We almost never take the camera out without one of these, the exception being in modern cities. There was one deluge in Africa when one of these sacs saved about the half the cameras on our truck from shorting. Also good for storing wet or dirty clothes.
Pacsafe steel mesh with lock
Like the waterproof sacks, I didn't rate this until I started to use it. Wraps nicely around the Billingham and you can usually find something fairly solid in a room to secure it to. Essential for peace of mind in a Chinese hard sleeper.
Ricoh GR1s film camera plus case
This is a small point and shoot I picked up from Ebay. I chose this camera for two reasons. The first is it looks rubbish, which might be a deterrent to a thief. The second is that it has a 28mm wide-angle lens that is reputed to be close in quality to a Leica. It was mean't as a backup and I've hardly used it. It lives deep inside our big rucksacks and rarely sees the light of day. I'm going to keep it though, just in case.
Several rolls of Fuji 800 colour negative film
Some emergency film for the above. I chose negative as it has more exposure latitude (it is more forgiving of your exposure mistakes) and 800 speed as it is nice and fast for most situations. The downside of fast film is it is more prone to damage by airport X-rays, although I think 800 should be ok. 400 would be a more normal choice but I've had much nicer results from Fuji 800 over Fuji 400 for some bizarre reason.
Canon EOS 20D 8mp DSLR
As promised, more details about my thoughts on the EOS 20D.
Good points
- Fairly solid and robust build.
- Excellent control layout. Almost like a film SLR, my other experiences being the film-based Canon EOS 3 and the Minolta Dynax 7, both of which are excellent cameras.
- Fast response compared to other digital cameras. No discernable shutter lag and instant 'on' - no boot-up time. All this is pretty useful if you are considering shooting wildlife.
- Low noise up to ISO 1600, with ISO 3200 very acceptable. Homer says "Digital sensors convert light to electric current. To record an image correctly (at the correct 'exposure') a certain amount of light must be let into the sensor. This can be achieved by leaving the camera shutter open longer (shutter speed) and/or by having a larger hole through which the light passes to the shutter (aperture). Alternatively you could let less light in and amplify/boost the signal. Doing this means you can get the same image with a faster shutter speed, for example. The downside is that the more the signal is boosted the more noise appears in the signal and hence the resultant image." Camera film is categorised by a film speed e.g. ISO 400. If you look at a film transparency or negative closely enough (perhaps with a microscope) you will see film grain, the underlying structure of the film. For reasons that I don't understand film that is very sensitive to light ("fast") and allows an image to be taken with less light and hence a faster shutter speed, tends to have a more obvious grain structure. Film that is less sensitive to light ("slow") and hence requires longer shutter speeds has a finer, less obvious grain structure. Hence for the best quality you use slow film, but if you have poor lighting conditions you use a fast film. Slow films are categorised with low ISO film speed numbers e.g. 50 or 100 whereas fast films are categorised with high film speed numbers e.g. 800, 1600 or even 3200. Digital cameras mimic this convention by providing a range of settings that balance available light/shutter speed and signal amplification. These are expressed with the same ISO numbers as film. With film, if you enter low-light conditions with a slow film you have two choices - use a tripod or change the film. With digital you just change a parameter and suddenly you can be shooting at ISO 800 rather than ISO 100. This is a fantastic advantage of digital photography over film, particularly for travel where you are unlikely to be in control of the lighting or the situation. The EOS 20D follows from its predecessors the EOS 300D and EOS 10D by providing low noise images up to ISO 800 and very reasonably quality images at ISO 1600 and ISO 3200. It is worth noting however that at ISO 3200 with flash (on camera or with the 580EX) some banding can appear within the noise, which I have had no great luck in clearing up with noise reduction software. This is a relatively small price to pay for getting shots that would not normally be possible for an amateur but let's hope Canon continue to improve their sensors to reduce noise at high ISO. There is more on noise and film grain in the "Software" and "Digital vs Film" sections below.
- Black and White mode. It is odd to provide B&W on a DSLR, as most people at this level know that B&W is best achieved by taking a colour photo and converting to B&W using editing software. When I bought the camera I thought this mode was a bit redundant, but in fact I have used it a lot whilst travelling, for two reasons. First, it takes practice to 'see' in B&W - to visualise what a B&W picture will look like before taking it, and this mode has helped me to develop that skill a little. Second, it is great for things like travelblog, where you are posting unedited pictures straight from the camera.
- Dual RAW and JPEG mode. Again I thought this was an unecessary lemon but in practice it has been very useful. Back to Homer - "JPEG is a proprietory image format that is used widely on the internet and digital cameras. A JPEG image is a compressed image i.e. some clever computer algorithm is used to reduce the data required to store the image in less space on disk (or your camera's flash card) than it would normally take. With JPEG this comes at a price - the compression is lossy as opposed to lossless i.e. you don't get back exactly the image you put in. Don't be alarmed, the compression algorithm is so good the chances are you will never ever notice. However that downside remains, and I have seen one instance where it failed. Much more important is what the camera does before creating the JPEG image. Most people now understand that with software like Adobe Photoshop you can pretty much do what you like to an image, if you are clever enough and spend enough time. What fewer people realise is that your camera has done quite a bit of image editing on the image already, before you even see it on the back of your camera's LCD. Typically there will be some form of automatic colour balancing, colour enhancement, contrast adjustment and image sharpening. Your camera may even give you some basic control over what it does at this stage. When it has finished it will write the image file - probably in JPEG form. Generally speaking digicams will do more processing on an image in-camera than a DSLR. This is because the camera companies believe digicam users are much less likely to edit their image on the computer afterwards than a DSLR user. Image enhancement is a great thing, but you have to be careful - every image enhancement operation is likely to destroy the quality of the image somewhat. People used to looking at images can spot this a mile off - take a look at some of the comments on Photosig if you don't believe me. The result is that many professionals and increasingly amateurs want as close to the raw data from the camera sensor that they can get, with a minimum of image processing done to it. Hence many top-end digicams and most DSLR's provide a proprietary RAW mode, which gives you just that." All my shots are taken in RAW, and I will edit the best ones afterwards. However the low-resolution JPEG is really useful because that is what I stick up on travelblog and that is what I send people if they want a copy of a photo. The resolution is just enough to get a decent 6x4 print but not enough to take up much disk or compact flash space. The other useful application of this mode, although I don't use it, is for portable photograph carriers like the IPOD Photo. The IPOD Photo doesn't read Canon or Nikon RAW so what use is it to photographers? Bugger all, unless you are able to get a nice little JPEG at the same time.
- Excellent flash exposures with E-TTL II. Modern Canon cameras provide two ways to use flash: standard, where the camera assumes that the flash is the only source of light for the subject (modes
and ) and 'Fill flash' or 'Slow synch flash' where the camera uses the flash to illuminate the foreground subject and ambient light to illuminate the background subject, choosing the length of the flash burst so that both foreground and background lighting is balanced as far as possible (modes and ). This latter technique, if it works well, can be useful in all kinds of situations. In Africa, where there was a lot of strong ambient light around, I found the fill flash algorithms in the 20D worked very well, but in that intensity of light the little on-camera flash struggled to cope. I also noticed that in lower lighting conditions even the on-camera flash could be of some use when photographing animals and birds at the long end of the 70-300 zoom. When we got back to the UK I invested in the latest Speedlite 580 EX flash unit. (see above).
Bad points
- Low dynamic range. Have you ever wondered why the picture you just took (with film or digital) doesn't look the same as what you saw with your eye? Some bits are too dark or too light? One reason this happens is that the human eye can record a much larger range of light intensity at one time than either camera film or a digital sensor. The range of the darkest intensity to the lightest intensity that can be recorded in a single image is called 'dynamic range'. All those of us that have taken beautiful sunsets with lovely red colours in the clouds, but with a foreground that is completely black, have experienced the limitations of the dynamic range of our sensors or film. If I remember correctly popular net wisdom has it that negative colour film (what most of us used to use) has a dynamic range of 7 f-stops whilst transparency (slide) film ((what the pros used to use) has a dynamic range of 5 f-stops (don't worry about f-stop if you don't know already). Digital sensors are supposed to have a dynamic range of around the same as transparencies. The EOS 20D seems to have quite a narrow dynamic range. This came to light (sorry) during our Exodus Overland trip in Africa where one of the other passengers had a Nikon D70, another very good amateur DSLR. Over the course of 11 weeks we shot many of the same shots at exactly the same time. What became apparent was that the dynamic range of the D70 was greater than that of the 20D, and by quite some margin. If you imagine a typical landscape shot, with some dark foreground (the ground) and light background (the sky). In the bright African conditions the EOS20D would almost never record the range of contrast adequately. Many Canon users would shout, so what, you wouldn't expect it to. Fair enough, except that the Nikon D70 more often than not did, or made a much more reasonable attempt. Experienced photographers will no doubt be thinking "so what, there are lots of ways around this". There are ways to adapt, which I've mentioned above, but they are all time consuming. The fact remains that if you are using a 20D for your holiday snaps you need to be aware of this and be prepared. Out of interest Alan Briot compares the results of the latest top-end Canon to that of Fuji Velvia in a medium format camera in this article and concludes the dynamic range is better than slide film. Just shows - what do I know?
- Bad Exposure algorithms. To some extent I suspect this may go hand in hand with the problems outlined above. I would summarise the idiosynchracies of the exposure system on the 20D in this way - it handles most scenes with low contrast quite well, sometimes very well, even if they are a long way from 18%!g(MISSING)rey, but it handles high contrast scenes very badly (BTW I should say I'm no expert on exposure at all, and as you can see many of my pictures are underexposed). Again we noticed this in many real-life situations comparing it to the Nikon D70, which tended to do much better. Again take the typical landscape shot with some dark foreground and some bright sky. The EOS 20D claims to have evaluative exposure algorithms that cleverly analyse the scene to give best exposure. Hmmm. In that mode if you point the centre focus point just above the horizon you are quite likely to get a reading that exposes perfectly for the sky and leaves the land completely dark. If you point the centre focus point just below the horizon you are likely to get a reading that exposes the land perfectly and whites out the sky. In this circumstance, with 50/50 sky/land one would expect a reading that reflects the average of the sky and the land. Sometimes you get this problem, sometimes you don't. The problem is exacerbated when you use the rule of thirds i.e. don't place the horizon in the middle but in the top third or the bottom third of the photo. To avoid this I took to using the exposure lock button on almost every photo, and on the many occasions when that didn't really help I took to using Manual to average the readings from the sky and the land. Again I wouldn't have really worried about it except that the Nikon D70 did a much better job.
- Poor colour saturation. This is annoying rather than critical. If you take a (correctly exposed) shot of the same colourful object with a 20D and a D70 you will get two quite different images. In a 'blind' test most people would prefer the D70 image. Why ? Because the colours are more saturated i.e stronger, richer, more vivid. The one case where this is not likely to be a good thing is representing skin tones, where an image that is even slightly more saturated than reality is going to look odd. However if you take the images side by side and look at 'reality' you might well conclude that the D70 is actually producing colours that are closer to reality i.e. they are not oversaturated but more correctly saturated whilst the 20D colours are undersaturated compared with reality. (This is quite difficult to do as your eye changes the colours you see depending on what colour is next to them.) Almost every colour image on this Travelblog would look slightly more colourful and hence slightly more appealing were it taken with the D70 as opposed to the 20D. This isn't a great problem, as increasing saturation in Photoshop is a doddle, but it is a bit irksome to have to do this at all, and also to know what you are displaying to people is not as good as it should be. I don't know why Canon have chosen to do this, as I'm sure it is not a big technical issue for them to produce more saturated images (and yes, I've tried fiddling with the parameter settings). It is clear that the 20D will (and does) produce great images of people out of the camera, but I'm sure this can be achieved without losing good colour saturation on all the rest of the images. I would go as far as to say that the images produced out of the EOS 300D (and hence 10D) are better in this respect than the 20D but the effect is much less noticeable and I haven't had enough exposure to the 300D to really be sure.
- Can't create prints larger than ~A4 at 300 pixels per inch. Not Canon's problem per se, just a problem with digital sensors as a whole. For professional looking prints 300 pixels per inch is recommended. At this resolution the number of pixels in an 8mp sensor gives prints about A4 size. You can lower the number of pixels per inch for larger prints as people tend to view larger prints from further away, but I've not yet tried it. If anyone has I'd love to hear the conclusions (as I'm sure would many 300D, 350D and D70 users who are out there travelling with brand new cameras as we speak.)
I've had the following comment from Matt H
The >A4 prints I've made from my 20D are impressive - certainly impressive to non-experts such as my family! I don't think you need worry too much about printing at less than 300dpi. I often print enlargements (or normal size crops) at 150dpi or even less on my Epson R800, when I need to. I'm almost always happy with how the print looks - which is the most important thing really. 😊
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Jaimie
non-member comment
Eh?
More girly stuff next time please (pretty scenery, cuddly animals, smaller words etc.) I am sure Al will love it though, geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek. Jaimie XX