Digital Home Thoughts: A Week with the Canon 20D

Artistic Flair
Like its predecessors, the 20D offers several parameters to adjust image contrast, sharpness, saturation and color tone. There is also a new black and white shooting mode with a few creative features.

The black and white filter effects provide the ability to apply different colored filters to the image much like using a physical screw on filter with black and white film. Yellow, orange, red and green filters all alter the image by enhancing like colors. For example, the green filter makes green objects such as plants and trees appear more vivid in the exposure.

The tone effects change the overall color of the image. It can be set to a choice of sepia, blue, purple and green to create an effect similar to chemical toning. The following images below are a sample of the toning effect.


Figure 4: These three images were shot in the black in white mode with the toning effect. From left to right they are using purple, green and blue toning effect.

Granted most people shoot in color and do their black and white conversions in an image editor, the new features provide an extra way to get creative with your camera. Black and white purists will probably find the canned effects limiting although there is a decent degree of customization available by tweaking the contrast and sharpness dials.

Conclusions
A faster frame rate, improved auto-focus, better image quality at higher ISO all contribute to the success of this latest offering. For Canon shooters wondering if the 20D is worth the upgrade from previous models it's hard to say. For me, there are many improvements over the 300D, however, 10D users might not find enough difference to trade up. For those folks out there looking to get into the digital SLR market, the 20D is a perfect blend of high end features with an affordable price tag.

Several 20D users around the web have complained about various new product bugs and glitches, such as lockups and error messages. I've been using my 20D steady all week without any problem at all. So far I'm quite pleased with my purchase. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments about the 20D.

For image samples, visit my photo blog at http://jason.aminus3.com