Canon 20D Digital Camera

I recently got a new camera in my collection to help with my company 'Photos By Madman'.

It is a Canon 20D.

I own several cameras, I use Nikon Cameras the most, Canon second and a 4"x5" (think 'old fashioned') view camera third.

The Canon 20D has a 1.6x 35mm camera equivalent focal length. So what does THAT mean?

Well, professionals often look at Camera lens specs based on the '35mm camera equivalent" focal length. It lets you judge a lens to see how it will perform in several ways.

On a 35mm, a 'normal' lens is in the range of 40 to 60 - but in practice, it will be a 50mm lens. This means that the image taken by it looks very much like what the human eye would see in the same scene if it looks straight ahead and doesn't waver.

For a camera with the Canon 20D's "approximately APS sized" Sensor (APS-C is how they word it), if you buy a 'normal' lens, it will say it is a 50mm, but really it will be 1.6x's that size: an 80mm lens.

Now an lens around 80mm lens (lets say 70 to 90mm) on a 35mm camera is considered a portrait lens - the 'ideal' lens for taking someone's photo.

This means if you are taking pictures of animals a long distance a way, or buildings or really anything that you want to 'get up close' without physically moving closer, that lenses designed for a 35mm camera are going to help you out a lot.

Here are some standard sizes of lenses for Full Frame Digital (and Film) compared to the equivalent so called 'Digital' or APS-C.

The left hand side is the lens size for a 35mm camera or a 'full frame' digital. The middle is what it is like when used on a Canon 20D a so called 'digital' size or APS-C. The right is a description about that lens size. All numbers are approximate, useful comparisons not trying to be exact, and besides, APS-C/Digital. See special note at the bottom about fisheye lenses.

• 11mm is a 18mm, and you are going to have a hard time with any 'reasonable' budget finding anything wider than this.

• 13mm is a 21mm

• 16mm is a 26mm, the smaller the number, the more expensive the lens is usually.

• 18mm is a 29mm, you can get some 18mm to larger, 55mm for example lenses, that are still not too expensive

• 28mm is a 45mm, a 28mm is what I consider the 'anything smaller than this is starting to get expensive' point

• 31mm is a 50mm, so a 30mm plus or minus is a good 'normal' lens

• 50mm is a 80mm, so a 50mm lens on a D20 is a good 'portrait' lens

• 70mm is a 112mm, at 112 we are starting to be 'telephoto', good for zooming in but still OK for portraiture.

• 75mm is a 120mm. 120 is still a mild telephoto. Things start to look unnatural or flat. Not good for portraiture, but OK if you want a close-up and don't mind the flattening of perspective.

• 80mm is a 130mm

• 100mm is a 160mm. Once you get here you have given up on perspective or you are purposely taking advantage of the flattened perspective, you are usually just zooming in to get a close up.

• 200mm is a 320mm, you are going to need a tripod or very bright sunlight and/or a vibration reducing lens to take pictures with this. Also, when we start talking 300mm+ you are going to have to think about something that locks the lens up so that that vibration doesn't ruin the shot, ideally you want to find out how to take the picture without touching the camera - that will depend on what camera features you have - so that the movement of your finger pressing the button doesn't ruin the shot.

• 300mm is a 480mm, 300mm is the biggest size you are normally going to find at a 'reasonable' price. It's also the biggest I've ever taken a hand held (resting against a solid object) picture with so I have no hope of using a 480 without a tripod or vibration reducing lens.

• 400mm is a 640mm, a 'monster' zoom. 400 is the largest I own and it is a vibration reducing lens, which is necessary unless you have a monster tripod that is really steady - your little $60 cheap tripod isn't going to be sufficient. I have a monster tripod, but I still use the VR feature to get good photos at this level of zoom if there is any wind whatsoever.

A special note about fisheye lenses. These are special lenses that 'embrace' the distortion of very small focal lengths. They are NOT simply 'really short focal length' lenses. In theory, a fisheye lens should be cheaper than a 'correct' lens of the same focal length because it is not trying to add extra glass to correct the circular distortion. If you use a full frame fisheye lens on an APS-C camera, you will be disappointed. You will get a lot of distortion without the fisheye effect. Also be careful when looking at specs. The term 'full frame' in fisheye lenses has for years - long before APS-C - had a special meaning. So if you see it in literature for a fisheye lens, realize it may have nothing to do directly with 'full frame' vs 'APS-C' sized sensors. 'full frame' in this context is also called 'diagonal fisheye effect'. I don't personally use fisheye lenses, so I'll stop here with just the warning that fisheye lenses are special and you will likely be disappointed until when and if someone comes out with a APS-C fisheye lens.

This also means that it is going to be very expensive, if even possible, to find a really 'wide angle' lens for your 20D camera. If you want to take wide angle, scenery for example, but rooms of houses as another example, you are probably better off buying a 'full size' (full 35mm sized) sensor camera and using that for your wide angle shots.

Personally, I bought the 20D for weddings and for wildlife photography, and I never try to use it for anything wider than an 18mm which becomes a 29mm equivalent - I use that for 'group' photos such as the wedding partly lined up at the front of the stage.

The lenses I normally use, plus a couple others that would be nice alternatives are

18-55mm Which is effectively a 29 to 105mm lens. Great for group shots - if not too close. Great for portraits (remember 80 is the sweet spot for portrait shots.) Great for close ups of the rings. Lousy for taking wildlife photography - unless you are in a zoo, the animals are too far away and too small.

70-300mm which is effectively a 112-480mm lens. This can be used for portraits at the low end, but is is a little too zoomed in to be properly called a portrait lens, you have to be further away, so you need more light to avoid jiggle, the subject will look a little flat and it will be harder to get background blur. But for wildlife photography, the 480mm equivalent is really nice if you can find a really good way to keep the camera steady. Think a rock with a bean bag pillow - rest the camera body and lens on one or two bean bag pillows or a heavy duty tripod (even a light duty tripod would be better than nothing.

28-300mm which is effectively 45mm-480mm lens. This is a more pricey one, and I decided not to buy these for another reason, at the telephoto end the current ones don't allow as much light in as the 70 and 75 to 300mm ones do. This means that while you gain the ability to do 'normal' to 'portrait', you sacrifice the ability to take good wildlife photos a little bit. But given that running a 480mm lens is hard enough normally, making it work with less light was enough for me to say, I'll go with 2 lenses to cover the 29 to 480mm focal length, rather than one to cover 45 to 480mm.

The downsides of 2 lenses I picked are:

• I have to carry 2 lenses
• If I want to swap between normal and zooming in for wildlife, I have to change lenses. This takes time, it is inconvenient and really serious and extremely frustrating problem is that it increases the risk of getting dust, hairs, spores etc.., in the body which can mess up my photos. (so I'm very careful and try not to frequently switch back and forth but I still have the problem.)
• If I want wide angle shots in a church or scenery or take pictures in a tight space - I can't do it easily and sometimes simply it is impossible. And in my case, I switch to a Nikon full frame camera with an 10-24mm (10-24mm equivalent because it is full frame) camera. In other words I carry 2 or 3 cameras with me.
• I have to avoid taking pictures with both the Canon 20D and the full frame Nikon camera for the same shoot because the way they read the light is different, the Canon tends to be a little 'bluer' than the Nikon (I find the Nikon to be closer to what I 'remember' the colors to be.) So if I have a series of shots from both cameras in the same scene, it is hard to show them to people 'side by side' because of the color shift. This is not a Nikon vrs Canon thing, take 2 Canon's or 2 Nikons and you are likely going to have the same effect, but obviously, a 10D vrs a 20D Canon is more likely to have a similar (but not identical) computer program so their colors will be closer. And someday when Canon ships a 30D, the 20D and the 30D will also likely be closer. But some day in the future, when Canon ships a 90D or 100D, there is a really good change that the algorithm will have changed (improved) so much between the 20D and the 90D that the difference between the two Canon's will likely be greater than the difference between a now modern Canon and a now modern Nikon. Of course I could be wrong, but I think it is a reasonable assumption.

The advantages of the combination I picked, at least for me are:

• I really don't often find myself switching between the 2 lenses. When I am taking pictures I'm more likely to take a lot in one range, then move to another location and take a lot in the other range. So in the church for weddings, I'll likely leave the 18-55mm (29-105mm) on for almost everything.
• It does a really nice job of covering 2 major ranges that I like to shoot in. I do flowers to small groups of people to portraits one day, and I do 'telephoto' of animals in the wild on a different day. When I'm driving in my car, I put the 70-300 (112-480mm equivalent) lens in because if I see something beside the road - animal or whatever, that I want to take a shot of, I am most likely going to want the zoom characteristics of that lens. You pull over, stop the car (vibrations), roll down the window, and then use the window as a rest - and most of my photos like this will be taken at the 480mm equivalent range, using the window frame as my tripod. I figure if I ever need to take a picture of an accident and want the other lens, I'll have time to change the lens.

In your case, if you tend to go back and forth between 'really nice portraits' and 'pictures of pets', you might prefer something like a 28-200mm (45-320mm equivalent). That is why I'm giving the types of photography I do.

Now, there are two TYPES of lenses for DSLR cameras with a sensor that is smaller than a 35mm camera. The lenses that provide light 'full frame' aka 'film' lenses and lenses that are 'digital'. Do NOT think that a 'digital' lens is BETTER than a full frame, normal, film lens. They are actually not. Here are my highly biased opinions of them. My comments about 'normal' below are not talking about a 50mm focal length, they are referring to lenses that work on full frame/35mm film as opposed to 'smaller digital' sensor sizes.:

• A 'digital' lens is lighter weight, because it needs less glass to do the same job for a small sensor. (This is a plus in favor of the 'digital' lens)
• For any given quality, the 'digital' lens should be cheaper than the comparable 'full frame.' (This is the end of the benefits of a 'digital' lens.)
• Ignoring the sometimes lower cost, a 'digital' lens is mostly a marketing gimmick to let them sell you an inferior lens at an inflated price. I have even seen places charge MORE for a 'digital' lens that was otherwise basically the same as a non-digital lens. And in this case the ONLY benefit is that the lens weighs less. For casual photographers, yes that might be a slight benefit - but if shooting telephoto lenses, the weight helps stabilize and get a better picture, so even the 'lighter weight' is not always a benefit.
• A 'digital' lens does NOT work on digital cameras that have 'full frame' sensors! It will be dark, even black, on the corners and the quality as you get near that will go down quickly. So the 'digital' really means 'will only work with APS-C sized and smaller sensors' and has nothing to do with film vs digital.
• Most lenses get poorer and poorer quality as you get closer to the corners - I understand it is a physics thing. Now, fortunately, it is generally a useful effect to have the corners a bit blurry. BUT you can do that later, in your computer if you really want it. What this means is that, when you use a 'normal' lens on a small sensor digital camera like the 20D, you are using the BEST part of the glass for your whole picture. The poorer quality is off the sensor. This means that in general, 2 lenses, one for normal and one 'digital', the 'normal' will give you a sharper, more evenly lit picture on a small fram digital than the 'digital' one will. You will get a BETTER picture on your small sensor 20D with the normal one, you will also get a better one than taking the same normal lens and using it on a full frame/35mm film camera. Also distortion like barrel and pincushion and others tends to get worse nearer the edges, so the full frame film lens on an APS-C sensor means you get the 'good quality' part of the lens on the APS-C sized sensor.
• This means, unless the weight is really a hangup for you - if the digital is the same price or more expensive, leave the crap for someone else and get the full frame lens1
• Companies like Canon and Nikon typically give higher quality 'digital' lenses than the me-too brands. But if you use a 'normal' lens on a small sensor camera like a 20D you may find you prefer the price of an off brand Tamron etc.., lens because the cheaper lenses to me seem to be poorer quality mostly as you get to the corners, so as long as I'm shooting on a small sensor Canon - or Nikon - digital camera, the off brand gives me to my eye just as good of a shot as the more expensive 'digital' brand name one (I shoot both brand name and 'me-too' taking advantage of this.)
• If you are shooting on a full frame sensor (so not the 20D), I would recommend you pay more attention to the reviews of specific lenses before you buy than if you are using a 'normal' lens on a small sensor like the Canon 20D

There are probably 100 other comments I could make to help make your life easier. I'll end for now with this: If you need to take pictures in really low light and you find your zoom lenses aren't making the grade, consider buying one or more fixed focal lenses with a much smaller 'f-stop'. I won't go into details on this - but generally, the lower the light, the more you want non-zoom lenses.

Hindsight is 20/20

All of the rest of this article was written over time in 2019.11. I am still using my 20D camera (as well as several others.) Back in the early 00's I was getting a new digital camera every year for my professional photographic business - because the cameras were improving that fast and they just weren't quite good enough. While I do have a newer professional digital cameras, I still use the 20D for lots of real work - 15 years after I bought the 20D brand new.

You can tell the quality of a photographer by the quality of his equipment:

No! Some people would say (like they did in the old days when I shot 35mm as well as 4x5" film) that I wasn't a professional because I use crappy equipment. I don't remember all the details now, but at one point in the late 1990's I was asked in Europe to do a professional photo shoot - but I had left my professional camera back in my hotel room, 2 hours away. The person had only a film 'point and shoot' camera - as they were called back then, a camera with basically no controls other than a single button to 'shoot', and only one lens, the plastic lens built into the camera. I had no studio aids, the location was 'terrible' with bad lighting. A year later I went back with my 'real' camera and did another shoot for the same person. For years I used the images from those two shoots and challenged people to pick from about 10 images and tell me which ones were from the point and shoot camera and which ones were from the 'real' camera. I only had one person (a friend who specialized in photographing oil field tanks) who was able to tell accurately - and he said the way he could tell was by the lighting. Well done. But no one else ever did come close to figuring out which were which. My point is - great equipment helps a professional do a great job, but a professional doesn't require great equipment to do a great job, but great equipment gives the professional more flexibility.

I was going somewhere useful with that - something about the 20D still being a useful professional camera and why I'm not ashamed to be using a 15 year old camera. But by the time I wrote my diatribe above about people who say I have to have the best equipment to take 'professional' photos - I forgot where I was going.

So I'll go on another bunny trail instead:

I have 'expensive' equipment. I once spent $8000 on specialized photographic software. I've spent $4000 on a single (monster) lens. I found when people could see the really expensive equipment, they felt comfortable that I was a professional, even if the equipment I was currently using was much cheaper (and I was using the cheaper equipment because it was BETTER for the current need - but they didn't know that.) So I find, if I'm being paid to do a job, I carry the expensive equipment 'just in case I need' it, plus whatever equipment I think is going to be ideal for the job - even my old 20D camera. Just seeing the expensive equipment is enough to stop most people from making incorrect judgments about my abilities based on the equipment I'm holding.

So ... if you want to look like a professional photographer, go on ebay and buy yourself a $10,000 'for parts' White and Black Canon monster lens (I've seem them occasionally as low as $100 if they are defective enough) and just carry it with you any time you want to look professional. This is especially good if you do NOT have a Canon camera, because if someone asks to see it working, you can say "Oh sorry, I didn't bring along the camera that I need for that lens..." The Nikon monster lenses aren't as 'recognizable' or as pretty as the beautiful black and white Canon lenses, so you really want to do this with a monster Canon lens, no other brand has quite the same look. And no, I do NOT do this. All the equipment I carry CAN be used if appropriate, and there is always at least a possibility that I will use the equipment I carry with me, but I have the advantage that I really do own that equipment for real reasons, so I don't need to buy it 'for show.'

There's an old story about a lady who invited a famous photographer for dinner. She comments on his photography about how good it is, saying "You must have very good photographic equipment to take such nice photographs." He says nothing until the meal is over, then says "The meal was delicious, you must have really good pots and pans to have made such a nice meal."

Size of images on disk:

The 20D has an 8.2MP sensor. When reading on the web and people ask 'how much space does an image of such and such a megapixel take?' most - actually all - of the answers I found say 'it depends' and never really answer the question.

Here is my answer: A 8.2MP image from a Canon 20D uses 7MB for RAW and 2MB for large, good quality JPEG.

When running in the best quality mode (RAW plus Large, fine resolution JPEG), the one I usually run in, the CR2 (RAW) file is sized in the high 6MB to low 7MB range - so you can think 7MB average and be pretty close. Then the JPEG it creates along side is from a bit under 2 MB some of the time to a bit over 2 MB most of the time. So I calculate I consume roughly 9.2MB for the 2 files per image, 10MB if I want to round up for easy calculations.

My 20D camera uses 13MB when calculating how much room is left on the SD card. (611 for my 8GB card.) I guess it is using a 'conservative', better safe than sorry number.

I thought to myself "Shouldn't the RAW files be very close to exactly the same size? Isn't the only difference the meta data" but it turns out the RAW file is saved using JPEG lossless which means the RAW saves perhaps half of it's size if stored uncompressed - but it will vary depending on the data, and stored in the .CR2 are 1 or more smaller, thumbnails let's call them. So no, the CR2 files from a given camera are not always the same size, and if they were, they would be considerably larger. But if you think 'about 7MB for a 8.2MP .CR2, that will make a good working average, and if think 9.2MB average for the .CR2 and JPEG beside, that will be a good approximation.

You can save a lot of space by not storing pictures in RAW. You might think to yourself: Why not just store JPEG's - those are almost always good enough, and you'd be correct even though this is an old camera now and it is 'only' 8 megapixels, the problem is that from time to time I don't like how the camera created the jpeg, and if I don't have the RAW I don't have the creative control I want for those pictures I really want to do something with.

So 1000 pictures stored with both .CR2 and JPEG only take up 9GB of space and over 100,000 pictures fit in a terabyte of space.

In 2004 I couldn't have said this: So what if I have a couple extra terabytes of data to store and backup. But in 2019 I figure I can store 10 years of RAW files for about the price it used to cost me to buy and process 5 or 6 rolls of professional film or a dozen 4x5" sheets of film! On my empty 8GB sd card (the largest card the 20D will take without help) I can store over 600 .CR2's with a fine resolution JPEG per card. Now really - do you even want to have 600 pictures stored on one card without backing them up?

About the only reason I can see to shoot with smaller file sizes is if you really need to take a lot of pictures in a few seconds. Shooting at RAW plus the highest sizer and resolution JPEG means you will have to start waiting for the camera to catch up - it can't save them all fast enough. On my high speed SD card I can take 6 quick succession photos before I have to 'wait' to take the next shot. If this is your case, I'd recommend you first switch to just .CR2 (RAW) - that will let you save about 20% more pictures per minute. If that isn't enough, then switching down to the largest size highest resolution JPEG is surely going to let you save pictures as fast as you can reasonably shoot them - I can take 40 in quick succession before I have to briefly pause. (About 4x's more per minute.) Obviously if you use the feature to take pictures rapidly you will hit the limits faster than if you press your finger down for every shot.