How good is your 20D at....

Al servo tracking using the center focus point.

Mine seems to be pretty awful even maintaining the focus point bang on the object, and even with the object filling a fair proportion of the view (at leat half).
I have tried various lenses 100-400, 70-200, 500mm Sigma prime and the results are all similar (<10% keepers), on various subjects birds, cars and even people.
I know it could be me but my daughters 400D is significantly better.

Is this just a limitation of 20D or am I missing something simple?. I think I need to start looking around for a used mk2 or N.

I would welcome any thoughts anyone may have.

Cheers

Rob

I was in the exact same boat as you and that's exactly part of the reason why I did buy a 1DIIN.

The 20D is a good camera overall, particularly as a starter, but does have some obvious weaknesses.

That's my experience.

It is this good... if you know anything about motorcycles you know how fast they have to go to get them up in the air that way. My keeper rate was 100%. I did these for a doctor I work with (he is the one on the red bike). It was so funny, the next day he asked me how many were in focus. I said "all of them".

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

LotsToLearn wrote in post #3924166
I was in the exact same boat as you and that's exactly part of the reason why I did buy a 1DIIN.

The 20D is a good camera overall, particularly as a starter, but does have some obvious weaknesses.

That's my experience.

Thank you very much for that - how did you find moving up from 20D to mk11N?, I am guessing image quality is about same but AF performance is totally improved.

Is this your experience?.

Many thanks again for the reply.

Best regards

Rob

Queenbee,

Must be my technique (or lack of) making the situation worse, maybe there is something I am missing.

Thanks for posting these

Rob

Oh and I forgot to mention performance should be better when 2.8 or faster. The 20D does have a cross type center point for that. However I still had enough issues for it to be frustrating.

Is your 70-200 a 2.8?

It could very well be technique as I don't claim to have the greatest... far from it. But if so, then the 1DIIN surely helps cover up for much of what I'm lacking.

woollyback wrote in post #3924254
Queenbee,

Must be my technique (or lack of) making the situation worse, maybe there is something I am missing.

Thanks for posting these

Rob

I don't know about that. It was my first time using it. I just locked on when they were still quite a ways down the road and fired when they got close enough. I was using the 50 1.4.

I only used my 400mm F/5.6 with BIF on the 20D but had no problem with AI servo tracking but the MKIIN is much faster focusing and the extra weight and size seems to actually help.

My 20D is extremely good with AIServo. I've shot cars, horses, kids, dogs, etc.....and I get a very, very high rate of keepers. 24-70L and 100-400L.

woollyback wrote in post #3924134
Al servo tracking using the center focus point.

Mine seems to be pretty awful even maintaining the focus point bang on the object, and even with the object filling a fair proportion of the view (at leat half).
I have tried various lenses 100-400, 70-200, 500mm Sigma prime and the results are all similar (<10% keepers), on various subjects birds, cars and even people.
I know it could be me but my daughters 400D is significantly better.

Is this just a limitation of 20D or am I missing something simple?. I think I need to start looking around for a used mk2 or N.

I would welcome any thoughts anyone may have.

Cheers

Rob