WOW! What a camera

Author's Rating:

Pros: FAAAAAAAAAAAAST camera, large buffers, 5 fps, exposure control!, 3 shutter modes

Cons: Expensive, Canon tries to limit third-party products, no preview mode, no stitch mode

The Bottom Line: 
Torn between a Rebel & 20D? Save for the 20D now there's also 30D. All canon EF/EF-S lenses work with this body. Digic image sensor superior to other types.

Author's Review
I've been into film photography for years, what always irritated me the most was waiting for the film to come back. When the first digitals came out they were expensive and really primitive. My first 3 megapixel epson 650 digital was one heckuva camera and cost me over two hundred dollars about 6 years go (still have it, still works great!), digitals have really come a loooong way since those early cameras. My second digital was the well regarded canon G2, I shot a lot of pictures with that camera and if you learn the beast's foibles you can take good shots with it. The third was the HP850, great camera with a great lens but far too limited for the advanced amateur or the professional.

All the early digitals had one huge achilles heal (and most digitals still have it) and that is that they are sloooowwwwww on the uptake and slow to be ready for the next shot. This means its difficult to take good heavy action pictures with the typical digital that you didn't pay an arm for. When canon first introduced their digital SLR's they were way out of my price range, then they introduced the Rebel which is basically a very stripped down version of their more expensive digital SLR's. The Rebel is a great camera, however if you're like me, once you've had a taste of what a fast Digital SLR can do you're going to want more! After much tearing of the hair and drooling over adds and reviews for the 20D, I finally broke down and bought one. My lord, what a difference, the Rebel was a Yugo while the 20D is at least a high end Cadillac!

What's in the box:
Battery charger
one BP-511/512 battery (This is a very widely used and reliable battery-my G2 and the Rebel also use this battery.)
camera body (metal instead of plastic like the Rebel)
lens
Body cap
lens cap (back and front)
Nice strap (pretty--red and black says Canon on it in white letters)
software disk
manual
quick reference manual
digital cable
tv output cable

Setup:
Not much setup. Charge the battery unless you're like me and already had some charged. Put the button cell in the holder in the battery compartment, this backs up the clock and your camera settings. Set the clock. Install a compact flash card. Install the lens. Turn the camera on and play with settings to your taste. Check the onboard firmware revision within the menus, if you don't have the most current firmware consider getting it, firmware is revised to fix problems as they are encountered. A good digital photography forum should have discussions of firmware for the 20D. Canon itself has some very brief text documents that list fixes (of course Canon may not give the entire story in their tech documents).

Software?:
I admit it, I haven't even looked at the software yet. It looks like you get photoshop LE which does just about everything most of us need without laying out the bucks for the full photoshop software. The Rebel came with Zoombrowser which is pretty easy to use, the 20D seems to come with something different. More on that later when I have time to mess with it.

Accessories:
Third party add-ons: Canon apparently is engaging in constant battle with other companies that make add-on accessories for photography such as battery packs, flashes, etc. etc. They do battle by making teeny little changes that make something made for an older Canon camera model no longer work properly on a newer body. The word is that they steadfastly refuse to license important stuff such as lens communication protocols so that companies like Sigma and Tokina can make AF lenses that talk to the electronics in the Canon cameras correctly--thus many third party products are "reverse engineered" which is fine, but, it also usually means that non-Canon AF lenses focus slower or may not work on a future canon body. Another area they try for exclusivity with is professional flash battery packages, a unit that works great on a 550EX might cook the capacitor on a 580EX because there have been tiny changes made to the specs that are not shared with third party manufacturers. Of course any damage done by "non-Canon" products is not covered by your warranty at all. I've bought a lot of non-Canon bp-511/512 battery packages off ebay--I just refuse to pay 80.00 for a battery if I can avoid it. The feedback to the seller should tell you if the product is any good before you buy it and stick with the 7.4V packs, I've found the 7.2V packages are generally inferior quality.

Compact Flash cards: For a machine like this one I suggest spending the extra dollars on the faster CF cards. San Disk makes the "Extreme" line and Lexar has an "80X" line of cf cards that offer faster read/write times than regular compact flash cards. These faster cards combined with the generous buffers in the 20D (23 frames at 5 fps if you shoot at 4 megapixels) means you pretty much never get bogged down and can't shoot because you're waiting for the camera to write it all to the memory card. In 4mp mode I get over 300 pictures on a 1 gigabyte CF card. Even the faster cards are right around a hundred dollars for a 1 gig card which holds plenty for most of us (even in highest quality mode) and you can always buy more than one. I don't really believe in carrying too many eggs in one basket anyhow. CF cards are probably the most reliable memory technology of its type because it has been around the longest, however, card errors do happen and if its a serious enough error you could lose the entire card full of pictures (but most often you only lose one or two shots around the bad memory area). CF cards have a limit to the number of times the same memory area can be written to, they don't last forever although some of the more expensive products have a huge number of guaranteed read/write cycles--many more than older products had.

Battery Grip BG-E2: If you own any of the Canon "IS" lenses (gyro stabilized lens), I strongly recommend that you invest in the battery grip for this camera (they are not the same part across the different camera bodies, i.e. the rebel uses a different one from the 20D, etc.). The battery grip (BG-E2) allows for the installation of 2 bp-511/512 battery packs and also repeats several of the controls for those times you're shooting vertically instead of horizontally. If you're using an IS lens you'll notice you go through batteries a lot quicker, it is consuming battery power to run the IS system in the lens. Canon must have realized that they needed to provide a backup for powering the camera since you usually can't walk into walgreens and buy these already charged and ready to go, so they made a battery adapter for the grip that allows for the use of AA batteries.

Lens hoods: for what these lenses cost you'd think you'd get a hood with it....dream on. At least the Canon consumer level lenses (and who can afford Canon L glass) do not come with a hood, that's an additional expense. Hoods prevent extraneous light from entering the lens and causing flares (generally in the shape of the aperature). I have not noticed a problem with flare on either my Rebel or on the few shots I've taken with this camera. If you're shooting outdoors in bright sun you might want to invest in one for your favorite outdoor lens, check places like e-bay for better prices. There are many third-party manufacturers of accessories such as hoods, be aware that very wide angle lenses require special hoods or it will show up in the frame!

Lenses: This camera can be bought body only, with the generally well regarded 17-55mm EFS, or the 28-85mm IS. This camera will work with any Canon EF mount lens made in the past for their film camera line. Third party manufacturers such as Sigma and Tokina also make lenses for this camera. (Third party lenses can be a crap shoot-- since Canon will not license the AF lens protocols for this camera--everything third party has been reverse engineered and you could buy a new body in the future and have the third-party lens suddenly not work with it or it doesn't work properly, they can be "rechipped" but only a limited number of times.)

Remember that this digital has a C sized receptor, i.e. it's smaller than a 35mm frame and thus any lens focal length is generally increased by a factor of 1.6 times what it would be on a 35mm film camera. Because of the magnification factor you need a relatively wide angle lens to shoot objects that are relatively close to you. The lens that comes with the camera is fine but you will want at least a 100mm prime or another mid range zoom. The very well regarded 28-135mm IS is a great lens, the gyrostabilized focus system makes it possible to hand hold the camera at much slower shutter speeds than would normally be possible; I love this lens! The 28-85mm IS has gotten mixed reviews, some love it, some hate it. Any zoom lens is going to be softer (can't focus as sharply) than a prime (single focal length) lens just because of the way a zoom lens is made. Most consumer level canon EF glass have relatively slow maximum f-stops of around 4 to 5.6, if you're shooting indoors in low light this will create a problem for you.

One last note on lenses. You might note that the stock 17-55 is an "EF-S" lens. There are only a couple of EF-S lenses made by canon and they only work on the digital cameras because of differences in the back of the lens. The Rebel, the 10D and the 20D can use EF-S lenses but at least one of the newer digitals coming out cannot use these lenses because the image receptor is going to be full 35mm film size. I don't know a lot about the technical differences in the lens other than they are supposed to be a bit sharper and don't work on the film EOS bodies.

Last but not least, invest in a UV or haze filter for every lens you own. It will protect your ridiculously expensive lenses from accidental scratches and finger marks from the kids, etc. It's much cheaper to lose a 25.00 filter to a bump than a 4 hundred dollar lens.

Flash: The canon speedlights are pricey but powerful and offer full integration with the canon bodies. The speedlights have their own IR focus assist, when you use a 550EX or 580EX with this camera there are no "short bursts of flash" to assist in focusing. The built in flash on the 20D is ok for the occasional snap shot but if you're shooting professionally you'll want something better. The 550EX is only marginally slower than the 580EX and costs a lot less (the 580 has a few new whizbangs but the 550 is plenty for most of us). Both the 550 & 580 has a jack on the side allowing for an external flash power pack to speed cycle times and number of flashes. There are several third party flash units made that will work on the 20D that cost less but may not offer all the integrated modes available with the true canon speedlights (or the external battery package capabilities). Unlike the Rebel, the 20D offers a plug on the side for a "potato masher" flash unit that doesn't mount on top of the camera but off to the side--Sunpak, Sigma, Metz, and several other manufacturers make professional third party flash units for this camera.

Digital Wallet: If you shoot a lot of pictures or won't be near civilization for awhile you may want to invest in a digital wallet. This is basically a metal case with a card reader, a battery, and a notebook type hard drive installed in it. If you already have a spare notebook hard drive laying around, you can buy the shell for around $60.00 (ebay). A digital wallet allows you to "offload" the images from your compact flash cards so you can clean them off and fill them back up again. Compact Flash is probably the cheapest type of solid state memory available right now and there are even mini hard drives in the same physical sized card that hold more but they are still more expensive than this wallet is and a common (and cheap) 20 gig notebook drive can hold thousands of pictures. If you aren't tech savy enough to build your own wallet there are several brands sold that are all ready to go when you open the package--and some of the kits that are pre-assembled are also sold on ebay too (you just pay a little more because somebody put it together for you already).

Misc.: Lots of hard drive space to store your photos or a dvd burner to burn them off to DVD for storage. I personally think I have better luck with card readers than offloading directly from the camera. USB 2.0 is very popular but myself I prefer my firewire cf reader, I find it a lot faster than USB 2.0 ever has been (there are technical reasons that firewire will always be faster even though the claimed transfer speeds are comparable). If you want to print your own prints a good photo printer is another expense. With a good photo printer and re-loading your own ink you can get the price for a 4X6 down to around 15 cents, even at walgreens or walmart prints are generally about 30 cents each, however, unless you buy expensive paper the photo lab prints should be more stable and last longer hanging on the wall or in the photo album. Canon's own line of photo printers and several others support EXIF which lets you plug the camera straight into the printer and print from the camera without a computer.

Controls:
On the Rebel everything is pretty much on the back of the camera, the 20D has a lcd panel on the top right next to the shutter button. From the top lcd panel you can set a lot of the commonly accessed controls--shooting mode (single, continuous, continuous AI), flash exposure compensation, metering mode (center weighted or averaged), and White Balance (Auto, sunlight, cloudy etc. there is also a manual white balance mode). On the top left of the camera is the familiar mode dial (Full Auto, portrait, landscape, closeup, sports, night portrait, flash off, Program mode, shutter priority, aperature priority, Manual mode and Automatic depth of field preview).

Behind the shutter button on the right of the camera is the familiar rotating knob for adjusting aperature or shutter or both, depending upon the shooting mode you are using. On the back of the camera are the menu controls, the playback controls, the trash can button, and a large rotating knob that changes several different settings depending upon the mode or menu you're in. The large round knob on back changes exposure compensation if you've got the shutter button held down (and the power switch in the right position) or ISO speed if you have pressed that button on the top right. On the back there are also the buttons for AF point selection, AE lock and zoom mode in playback, a tiny joystick-like button for moving around in playback (and selecting AF points) and of course the LCD screen. The left side of the camera has jacks for connecting to a pc, output to a TV, the jack for the remote, the flash sync port for external professional flash units.

Using the camera:
Most of the people that would cough up the bucks for a machine like this are not going to be shooting in full automatic mode--just isn't going to happen. I find the controls fairly intuitive and not that different from the Rebel I'm used to. I suppose the joystick button might be one of those mixed reaction issues, the Rebel simply has four buttons that do the same function--the joystick is just more versatile I'd guess.

I use Shutter priority more than any other mode when shooting fast moving objects. I shoot a lot of karate indoors with flash and I need to keep shutter speeds up while considering the cycle speed of the flash.

The 20D has a superior focus system (faster and more accurate) as compared to the Rebel, the two different focus modes for continuous shooting are icing on the cake but very welcome. The Rebel has a "sport" mode that predictively focuses upon a fast moving subject--it's great, but the rebel limits you to ISO 400 while the 20D has this mode available in Program, Av (aperature priority) and Tv (shutter priority) and at any ISO (speeds up to 3200 ISO) (but it's not available in full auto. The second mode available for continuous shooting continually focuses and makes the final adjustment when the shutter button is fully depressed (so it doesn't make the final focus until the picture is being taken).

Exposure control: This camera offers more exposure control than is available on the Rebel. There are separate exposure controls for regular exposure and flash exposure. Every canon I've owned has been a little quirky on flash exposure, on the Rebel you're generally advised to focus lock on someone's skin because that seems to be how you get the most accurate flash exposures. It should be noted that the popup flash doesn't automatically pop up in any mode except full auto. If you're shooting in Av or Tv mode you have to pop the flash up yourself with the button on the side of the camera. The 20D has a three way power switch, On, OFF and a angled line. The angled line allows you to adjust exposure while pressing down the shutter button(everywhere but auto mode)--I personally think this is a bit clumsy but I suppose I'll get used to it. Generally when shooting with flash I increase exposure about a half stop -- now I can do it from the camera (from a control on the top right panel) and don't have to set it on the flash anymore (the Rebel lacks flash exposure controls on the camera).

Metering control: Standard center weighted or averaged metering.

Sound?: If you're used to a film SLR you'll feel right at home with this baby. The shutter system on a digital SLR is very similar to what you'd find on a film slr. The mirror system allows for metering and focusing through the lens, which means you get that reasurring thunk-thunk as the mirror flips up out of the way for the exposure, the shutter opens and the mirror drops back down into place again after the shutter closes. There are various beeps that indicate focus lock, etc. These can be turned on and off in the menus.

Weight: the 20D body is metal, not plastic like the Rebel so it's heavier than the Rebel. I've seen several articles that indicate that some of the extra weight is due to some weatherproofing that isn't there on the Rebel as well.

Picture Quality modes: If you shoot pictures that may end up in a computerized publishing system you'll appreciate the ability to shoot in RAW mode. If you know what you're doing with this, RAW mode offers much more post-processing control of the images after they leave the camera. There are several selections for RAW mode. I have no need to shoot in RAW but there are many digital photographers that refuse to shoot in anything else. The 20D offers post shot processing of images at least in 1600/3200 ISO, this additional processing makes what would normally be a very grainy image much more acceptable when blown up to 8X10 or larger. I shot some flash shots at night with the 20D in 1600iso last night, the 8X10's are much better than unprocessed iso 1600 images from the Rebel have ever been (noise is really not noticeable at all). If you want even more processing, software products such as Noise Ninja may be a product to investigate.

What can't this camera do that other digitals can do?:
Because of the SLR like shutter system, there is no preview mode using the LCD and there is also no stitch mode because that kind of function generally uses the LCD to help you line up the panorama shot. No loss, I've got other cameras that do that.

Shooting the action:
I find the shutter button a lot touchier on the 20D than it was on the Rebel, I need to develop a lighter touch. Even in single frame shooting mode the camera is so responsive it's easy to shoot two frames when you only wanted one! The continuous focus mode and the predictive focus mode for continuous shooting should mean fewer out of focus shots than I had with the rebel since the 20D is either predicting the focus based on movement or not actually making the final focus until the shutter has been fully pressed. The bigger buffers in this camera should mean no more getting bogged down waiting for the buffers to empty. The Rebel can only hold about 4 frames in the buffers, too few for really fast action like I tend to shoot. I find the camera fairly comfortable to hold but just like with the Rebel I think It'll be even better with the additional battery grip.

Other general experiences with it: I took it to karate class last night since some of the teachers have an event coming up and wanted some new pictures for the web site promoting it. Karate forms tend to be fast moving but the movement is generally limited to a small area, at least in the version of the art I practice it's that way. I found that in either of the two fancy continuous shooting modes the lens sometimes went wildly out of focus--I was using my original rebel 17-55mm (starting to think the lens might have a problem as it's done this to me on the Rebel but I just chalked it up to the poorer focus system on the Rebel--also have had a few rare error 99's on the Rebel which can be a lens problem too) so I switched back to single shot focusing mode--which is no slower. The shots were all sharp and well lit using a diffuser on the flash and setting about a half stop extra flash exposure on the camera. With the flash mounted on it, I found the camera a bit harder to hold onto, I think the battery grip is going to help that issue quite a bit. The pictures were great, I captured shots that the Rebel could never catch and I noticed something else too, on the Rebel there were always a few misfires of the flash, didn't get a single one on the 20D shooting in similar conditions (with the cp-E3 external battery pack) and probably at a faster rate because the 20D can just plain go faster than the Rebel can. One last comment about ISO, apparently you've got to do something different to get it into iso3200 mode, it's not available in the normal way other ISO selections are made--haven't figured that out yet, reading the book today! So far I'm really happy with this camera, the difference between this and the Rebel is just indescribable. I have to admit I'm kinda curious to see what the 1D or the 1D Mark 2 can do after experiencing the 20D, however for now I'm fully satisfied with this great camera.

update: Got the grip, makes the camera physically a lot bigger, so much so it hardly fits in my generously sized holster style camera case. The grip does make the camera easier to handle with a big flash mounted on top--a little disappointing is that the grip is all made of plastic--just like the one for my Rebel, it remains to be seen if I'll have the little quirky problems with this one that I have with the BG-E1 on the Rebel.

update: There is a manufacturing/assembly flaw being seen on the 20D with some regularity. When you get your camera carefully inspect the bottom on the opposite side from the battery door. Some bodies have been arriving with that screw improperly installed and because of that issue, there's a fair sized gap between the body panels that exposes the sensitive electronics inside the camera to the outside environment. Some people have described strange little problems apparently all caused by this gap in the case because of an improperly installed screw. I don't think I noticed it on mine but I'm going to pull the grip off and take a close look. Canon is fixing the problem under warranty, no problem, but its still annoying to spend so much for a camera and have what's obviously a lack of quality control on canon's part mean you have to mess around taking it in for service.

update 9-21-05: I shot a wedding indoors with the 20D using flash. While I believe the 20D has fewer issues with white balance in mixed lighting situations than the Rebel does, it's still not as good as my old G2 was about it. I love this camera, but it's MUCH heavier than the Rebel with the camera grip and a flash perched on top, invest in a monopod or some other product like that if you don't want aching arms after a two hour shoot. Sunpak makes a rather nice monopod that also functions like a chest pod ( includes a basic swivel head) for around $40.00, it's small when folded up and unlike my other monopod is short enough to use it on the floor where I tend to end up when shooting action that's right in front of the bleachers.

There are now a few products out to help with the mixed lighting problems experienced by many digitals apparently. Sto-fen makes the omni-bounce in white (diffuser), green (flourscent light situations) and gold (warming for daylight)(about $13.00 each). This is a fantastic product and I'd suggest you at least buy the diffuser it really improves flash shots a great deal. The omni-bounce fits on the front of a 580EX (I can't seem to find the colored ones for the 550EX anymore, just the white diffuser, even on ebay). The green colored omni-bounce changes the daylight of the flash to what should be the same color temperature encountered in a room lit by flourescent lighting--so no more mixed lighting problems. I also bought the "expodisc" (about 80 bucks on ebay) which is a product that duplicates a gray card without actually shooting one (it fits on the front of the lens like a filter, switch to manual focus and then you just snap a shot of the scene where the strange lighting occurs). The expodisc should be faster and possibly more accurate for setting custom white balance. I have a small CF card that I have shots taken in each place I commonly shoot so I can easily go to the frame I want and have the camera set a custom white balance. I have also experimented with RAW mode for the white balance issue, this works well, however, the file sizes are giant compared to even highest quality JPEG. RAW images are indeed superior, however, the camera can only store 6 RAW images in the buffer at a time which I suspect is not going to serve me in the kind of fast action I tend to shoot--even when using a fast cf card. When RAW images are converted to JPEG they keep their huge size as well. While it's true the quality is better with RAW images, storage of all those huge files becomes a problem quicker than it does with JPEG.

Even if you don't invest in these products, the objectionable color cast caused by mixed lighting can be easily corrected with photoshop LE (the function is easy to use as well). At least at this time, you have to correct each image individually because you have to pick a white point on each image. Just consider that the more post-camera processing you have to do, especially with a large number of pictures, the more time it takes and that's just time a lot of us don't have when the job needs to be done. The full version of photoshop 6 offers batch processing for several functions, but, as far as I can tell (and I may just not know how) it still doesn't offer a way to batch color-cast-correct 250 files without any user intervention.

I have had a chance to shoot a little bit in 3200 ISO mode, it's grainy, almost as grainy as 1600 ISO mode is on the rebel, however, like the rebel a batch run through Noise Ninja software makes the images very acceptable even at 8X10 size.

Still love the camera, once the white balance problem with flash is conquered I'm sure I'll love it even more. I just sprung for a 580EX, I haven't had a chance to shoot with it yet so more on that later.

update: Played around with the "professional" software provided with the camera, very easy to manipulate RAW images and save them as various different formats. The 580EX consistently exposes better than the 550 when left in auto mode for close up shots but I do find that I need to set the camera to increase exposure by a third and then also set the flash exposure to increase by a third when the subject is more than 15 feet away. I'm sure it's mostly got to do with the gymnasium setting I'm shooting in--it's a big area and the flash is trying valiently to light it all by itself. The power management routines built into the 580 and the slight cycle speed advantage mean less "total misfires" but I have had a number of shots that were underexposed when I don't give it enough time to recover after a short burst of continuous shooting. The expodisc is a great product but it's still not quite perfect. It works very well correcting mercury vapor (yellow cast)lighting but tends to make stuff a little too magenta under sodium lighting. The expodisc documentation recommends that you point the camera towards the light source, however I can't see how this is doing much good when using a flash unit so I'm going to try some different methods when shooting the white balance frame. Also using the green stofen omnibounce on the 580 to correct the flash output to a similar color to the surrounding light.

Update: 20D vs. 30D, from all I've read the 30D has selectable 3 or 5 fps for continuous shooting, bigger internal buffers (but so far I haven't seen anything on how much bigger), a larger lcd screen on the back (I thought the old one was big enough) and now they give the shutter a life instead of no mtbf rating at all on the older 20D. The sensor is the same, so EF-S lenses will work on it. I thought I'd read someplace that perhaps you get a little more picture area on the horizontal. For the price difference...the bigger buffer will be the most attractive feature and only to those that shoot RAW or use continuous mode a lot.

update: Still love my 20D, lately, while using the 580EX I've noticed an annoying habit of the camera in shutter priority mode to suddenly change my shutter speed on its own (but only when using flash go figure?). I've tried looking in forums for this issue and I've seen a couple of posts talking about problems close to what I'm seeing but not exactly the same. Canon recently issued a firmware update for this camera and since installing that it seems.....a little better but it's still happening occasionally (less now). I.e. when I shoot karate I set a shutter speed of 1/125 and use iso 3200 so I can get the best flash coverage and stop most action but not all (sometimes I get some really artistic blurs at that speed, it's kinda neat). The problem is that occasionally I'll look at the readout or in the viewfinder and suddenly realize the shutter speed is 1/60...ummmm guys that isn't what I set and I didn't change it (been watching myself to be sure my hand isn't getting on that wheel) so what the heck is going on? After the firmware update it "seems" to have gotten better. In my case I can also switch to aperature priority or full manual but so far--for the kinda fast action I do where you really don't have any time to screw with settings the part auto modes are working the best. I just invested in a sunpak TR-2000 battery pack and a wireless flash controller, going to see what I can do with a pair of flash units (my old 550 and the 580 working in tandem) lighting at least the stuff going on right in front of me. I'm really having a lot of fun with the camera, just wish I had more $$$ to invest in some better glass.

update on white balance issues: I started out with a expodisc for the stock canon lens, that was a mistake. I'm finding that you get a better white balance if you actually shoot the frame with the lens you're using and with the settings you plan to use (i.e. ISO). Buy the biggest expodisc according to the lenses you have, so if you're largest lens thread is 72mm buy one that size and use step down rings for all your other lenses (cheap on ebay 5 bucks for metal ones). I've got 58mm, 62mm and 72mm, thread sizes on the lenses I own. These are pretty standard thread sizes and if I'm not using a 58mm thread lens I pop the correct step down ring on the front of the lens and put the 72mm expodisc on there to shoot the exposure. If you're using flash be sure to use the flash and any filters on the flash too; this has given me excellent results, no more heavy yellow backgrounds in mixed lighting situations. Even with the latest firmware white balance apparently continues to be an issue with this camera sometimes, in daylight it's fine but this gadget will improve it even there (such as in heavy shade). Some day I'll spring for a 30D to see if the later tech has done anything to help.

update: I stumbled upon a floor model 30D at a bargain price. After shooting a few thousand shots I have to say that while I think perhaps the 30D meters a little darker outdoors, the white balance logic has been TREMENDOUSLY improved over the 20D. The larger lcd is nice as is the deletion of the somewhat annoying 100 pictures per file folder limitation. I suppose I can see why they did this originally but heck everyone should have firewire or usb2 readers by now so it shouldn't matter anymore. I love the spot metering that the 30D has for shooting karate, faces are much better exposed now than with the 20D. Both cameras are coming down in price with the 40D due out soon.