a semi appology to canon

Since I returned my first 20D and got a replacement I have been highly dubious about this camera.
At home under normal circumstances I've been getting 40% blurred photos (natural light etc).
I have come to the conclusion that I cannot take photos with it at less than 1/125th otherwise blur sets in.

That aside I took it on its first proper outing on Wednesday and I'm very impressed with it under studio conditions.

Good points:
1. 99.9% of the images are razor sharp (17-40, 70-200f4) without ANY sharpening.
2. Battery grip + 2 fully charged batteries. I took over 800 photos, chimped, showed the model etc and it is still on full power.
3. I never saw a busy screen once (RAW + 80x lexar)
4. I shot a set of 84 photos in 12 mins and it was a very nice set!

Bad Points:
1. The LCD colour is way off. A red colorama appears orange on the LCD.
2. The histogram does not seem accurate - exposing to the right blew highlights, although they were recoverable (?) a good exposed image seems to have the histogram centred.

No offense, but it's probably user error. The LCD's for quick image review, you can't really trust the colors, but the histogram I would expect to be reasonably accurate.

Isn't the LCD on a 20d adjustable? I believe it is, but can't say for certain as I have a 10d, which is not.

I doubt LCD adjustment on the 20D is any different than the 10D, which only allows you to adjust brightness. Any color casts are not correctable. To be sure, I would suggest doing a CWB of a white page and then taking a second shot of that page using the CWB setting. If the image on the LCD screen doesn't look grey, then that would confirm a color cast in the LCD.

Regarding the in-camera histogram, it's always based off of a JPG image. For RAW images, the displayed histogram is of the embedded JPG. You lose approximately 1 stop of headroom with JPGs. This explains why the histogram can display blown highlights but the RAW data is not blown.

not sure how it is user error.

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Ah ok, for some reason i was under the impression that the colors on the 20d LCD were also adjustable.

evilenglishman wrote:
not sure how it is user error.

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when its at the right - white is blown but can be recovered. When its in the centre its great.

The LCD can only be made brighter or darker - I tried that on the set, it just made it brighter orange and darker orange instead of red.

sounds like slin100 knows what he's talking about. cheers for that info.

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I didn't meant to be offensive, if I was I apologise. 40% blurred shots indicates to me either very difficult conditions, or user error. If you're new to the 20D practice and give it some time. I sucked when I first got my camera, but within days or weeks I got a lot better. Finding the ISO button really helped me a lot (that was before my class and I knew what it did)

What lens are you using and what are the lighting conditions when you get bad photos ?

When I first started with my 20D I was getting a lot of bad photos. I bought the 28-125IS which helped. I then started to really think about what I would need to do to produce a good photo rather than just click away and my % rate when up loads.

Last night I took 55 photos of cubs and a presentation award ceremony and had no bad ones - just one that came out too dark. This was using the 18-55 and a 12-24.

So, persevere and start to take notice of the small issues - it will get better. Practice a lot - it costs nothing (I have had the camera 2 months and am up to 1700+ pictures).

Alan

In two months i'm up to something like 3000 photos... not including the ones I deleted straight off because they were terrible or just little tests. Practice makes perfect. Well, it makes you less bad anyway

tim wrote:
In two months i'm up to something like 3000 photos... not including the ones I deleted straight off because they were terrible or just little tests. Practice makes perfect. Well, it makes you less bad anyway

Ahh - but NZ is such a nice place to take photos !!!

Not so much when they're of stupid things like your foot, a bottle of water, or stupid stuff lying around the house

I've had the camera quite a while, have taken over 3000 photos with it. Lens? 17-40 mostly but also 50 1.8.
I know it is fairly dark this time of the year but I'm having to put the camera on 800 ISO to be able to even use the 17-40 at a decent shutter speed during the daytime.
I'm also using the grip for extra stability.

I've even tried with a tripod and most of them came out blurred.

I never had this problem with the D60