First 2 20d's were defective, 3rd time is a charm.

Author's Rating:

Pros: Fast! Solid feel. Wide variety of available lenses.

Cons: Quality control is TERRIBLE. Small dim color LCD display. Heavy.

The Bottom Line: 
Excellent camera, terrible quality control, first 2 were defective. Buy at brick and mortar store with exchange capability if possible.

Author's Review
I recently purchased a Canon 20d kit with the 18-55 mm EF-S lens. I took roughly 200 pictures at my daughters dance recital and other test photos. Not one was as good as my 3.2 MP Fuji FinePix 3800. I tried indoor, indoor with flash, outdoor in bright sun. Nothing was any good. They were all blurry and dull. I shot in full auto, and creative modes, with the included lens and with a Vivitar Series 1 lens. I exchanged the first camera thinking it was defective. I had similar, although slightly better results with the second camera. I called Canon tech support several times, and they agreed that both cameras must be defective. Both of the first two cameras had a similar serial number. I exchanged the second camera for a third. This camera had a later serial number, and shipped with version 2.0.0 firmware whereas the first 2 shipped with version 1.1.0. While I don't believe it was a firmware issue, this confirmed that the camera was from a later production run.

I've only had the third camera a few days, but it seems great. I've taken pictures indoors with flash, outdoors in bright sun and a variety of tests. All pictures were very good. It was very clear the first two cameras were defective. I finally got the results I expected from all the reviews and from discussion of owners of previous 10d and D60 cameras.

While the images are much sharper that the first two cameras, they are not extremely sharp. Even in the full auto mode where the camera uses a 1 for sharpness and 1 for contrast as processing parameter settings, the images are still a little soft. However, unlike with the first two cameras one shot of sharpening in Photoshop literally brings the photo to life. This is consistent with what Canon claims, they don't want to over process in the camera where it is not reversable. So, expect to do some minor tweaking to get optimal quality. The images right out of the camera (at least a working one) are very good.

The camera has a really good feel to it. I agonized between the Rebel XT and the 20d. After 2 defective 20d's I was really tempted to go with the Rebel XT, but stuck with the 20d. Even though it is heavy compared to the Rebel XT, it is a solid camera. Now that it works, I'm not sorry. While the pictures that came out of the dance recital were very poor due to the defective camera, it was a true pleasure to use. I used the 3200 ISO setting (H) to get an acceptable shutter speed with available stage lighting. Other than the camera induced blur, the images were really good. This is especially significant because I was using a Vivitar Series 1 28 - 210 mm EF lens handheld at about 200 mm with an effective 35 mm equivalent of over 300 mm. I used the "motor drive" option and was able to get amazing shots. The speed of the camera is like a good film camera, or better. The camera even knows if you took a picture in portrait or landscape and will automatically rotate it when viewing.

I purchased a second genuine Canon battery, although I've yet to even slightly discharge the original, even after over 250 shots. I was very pleased to find that the BP-511 battery is a very common battery since it is common with Canon camcorders. There are many, many third party batteries between $18 and $25.

Clearly Canon's quality control is terrible. I could understand escaping defects in a cheap low end camera, but to have 2 defective cameras in a professional/prosumer class camera is simply unacceptable.

My suggestion is to purchase the camera at a local brick and mortar location with liberal return/exchange policy. I bought mine at a local Circuit City store. They did a price match which made them competitive with price. They also exchanged the camera twice with really less hassle than I expected. There were really no questions the first time, they just exchanged it. The second time I came armed with sample printed photos, memory cards full of pictures, CDs, and the name and extension of the most recent service tech at Canon customer service that I spoke with. About the only thing I needed was the sample photos. I did try the third camera in the store. The images of the first two were so bad that they could even be seen as bad on the on camera display. I used my own memory card and tried the third camera, and it looked better.

After the second camera I did visit a Ritz camera location. The clerk there really wasn't all that knowledgeable, but she was friendly enough that she allowed me to take some sample pictures with the 20d and a Nikon D70 on my own memory card. The pictures taken on the display 20d were so much better than my camera that I knew it wasn't anything I was doing (you begin to wonder after 2 $1500 cameras!). In fact, I thought the pictures from the Canon were better than the D70.

The lens for essentially $100 is good. I would really have preferred a longer lens, similar to the 18-70 mm Nikon bundles with the D70 kit. However, part of the reason I went with Canon is that I already had a Vivitar Series 1 28-210 EF lens that is compatible. While this may not be the best lens available, I've gotten some excellent photos on a Canon Rebel 2000/300 35 mm SLR.

I would have liked a larger and brighter display. While the backlit top display is easy to see in any lighting condition, the color LCD is hard to see in bright daylight. It is also pretty small. If manufacturers can put a 2.5" display on a relatively low cost subcompact digital camera, clearly a larger display could have been used. However, the zoom and scroll capabilities are fairly easy to use to be able to identify good or bad pictures.

The most obvious capability that you notice is how fast this camera is. It's like shooting with a film camera. While I loved the convenience of my previous digital camera, I hated the shutter delay. There is essentially none with this camera. You also rapidly begin to not bother turning off the camera when you are shooting. I left the camera with the default 1 minute power down. Pushing the shutter release down half way wakes the camera up, again, near instantly. I'm already feeling comfortable with it after a short time, similar to my previous Rebel 2000.

The viewfinder is smaller than the Rebel 2000 35 mm SLR, but bigger and brighter than the Rebel XT. This is just one of the reasons I went with the 20d over the Rebel XT. It also seemed easier to manually focus, although none come even close to my old Minolta SRT-101 with the microdiaprism in the center of the viewfinder.