whichlens.com - Lens Reviews

SIZE
The 350D is tiny. The 20D seems like a behemoth in comparison.
350D Dimensions (WxDxH) : 4.98 x 3.71 x 2.63 in./126.5 x 94.2 x 64mm
20D Dimensions (WxDxH) : 5.7 x 4.2 x 2.8 in. / 144 x 105.5 x 71.5mm

GRIP
I can easily see it being too small for some people. For myself, with smaller than average male hands, it is just the right size. I used to use a Pentax *istD which previously held the crown for smallest DSLR and I found it comfortable. Going from a 20D grip to a 350D, there is a very dramatic difference. If the 20D grip is the right size for you or even too small, then the 350D grip will probably be quite frustrating to use. The 350D grip is shallow and short, you won’t necessarily be able to wrap your pinky finger around the grip. I find the best way to hold the 350D is to wrap four fingers around the camera, and let the pinky support the camera from below rather than try and squeeze all four fingers together on the grip.

WEIGHT
350D – 17.1 oz. / 485g
20D – 24.2 oz. / 685g
The 350D is extremely light. I can easily hold it and operate it with one hand. On the 20D, the controls are a bit too spaced out and the camera is too heavy to use easily with one hand. Of course, this is a minor point, you should be holding your >$1000 camera with two hands just like they taught you in driving school. Both are not so heavy or light as to make them unusable or uncomfortable.

BUILD
Build quality on the 350D is good. Fit and finish are fine, even at normally iffy areas such as the battery door and compact flash door. The surface finish is a slightly rougher grain than the 20D. The quality is on par with the 20D. 20D has the advantage of magnesium alloy body but the plastic 350D can survive a bit of abuse as well. Quite simply, weight != quality. The 350D holds its own.

BALANCE WITH LENSES
With most of my primes, the 15mm fisheye, 35mm or 50mm, the 350D feels well balanced. In fact, such a lightweight configuration gives it an almost point and shoot feel. With larger lenses such as the Canon 16-35L f2.8, the feeling is reminiscent of the Sony F707/717 series. The configuration of a large lens with a small body looks a little comical, but actually is quite comfortable. It just means you are support the majority of the weight with your left hand and balancing it with your right hand rather than equally distributing weight in the left and right hands like you would with the 20D. The 20D is well balanced with most lenses and is also very comfortable to use, if a little bit heavy.

FLASH
The 20D flash is definitely bigger than the 350D. The vertical offset from the lens is pretty similar on both cameras, but I suspect the 350D has a weaker flash than the 20D.

Left 20D, right 350D

BATTERY
The 350D takes NB-2L batteries with a capacity of ~720mAh versus the 20D’s BP-511/512 batteries with a capacity of ~1350mAh. The NB-2L is lighter than the BP-511 and 512. So far, this reduction in battery life has not been a problem, on a fairly hectic 4 hour shoot, I shot 150 pictures in RAW and checked the LCD regularly for preview information. The battery did not indicate it was at low life, so you could expect the battery to last at least a full day of on and off shooting. Changing settings on the 350D requires a lot of referring to the main LCD where information is displayed. At first I thought this would make a big difference in power consumption, but it appears to have had fairly limited effect. The 20D can go for a day or two of on and off shooting and it uses a low power LCD to display most camera information, so it is still the absolute winner in terms of battery life.

Operation:

LCD
The 350D has a rear mounted status LCD rather than a top mounted one like the 20D. It can be illuminated just like the 20D LCD and displays the same basic information, albeit in a slightly different configuration. However, it is does not show ISO or flash exposure compensation on the status LCD, those are shown on the main LCD instead. When changing ISO, white balance and metering mode, the changing states are shown on the main LCD rather than the status LCD. A little different, but not all that troublesome since the two LCDs are adjacent to each other. The main LCDs seem to be identical in construction. Similar brightness and size, around 1.8 inches in size.

Left 350D status and main LCD, right 20D status LCD

CONTROLS
When adjusting settings such as aperture, shutter and exposure compensation, the 20D has the front control wheel where the index finger rests, and a rear spin wheel below where the thumb rests. The 350D also has a front control wheel, but lacks a rear spin wheel. Instead, the exposure compensation button must be held down while the front control wheel is rotated. I prefer this to the 20D’s spin wheel since it allows for easier one handed operation, but ultimately, a second dial on the back where the thumb normally rests is what I really want to see.

On the 350D, Control of ISO, white balance, auto focus mode, and metering mode have each been assigned one of the buttons on the five button cross arrangement. Each can be accessed by pushing a single button. Successive pushes of those buttons will scroll through the list of options available and displayed on the main LCD. Spinning the front control wheel or pushing the up or down buttons once you are in a control screen has a similar effect. Shooting drive mode can be changed by pushing its button to scroll through its options, but it is separate from the five button cross arrangement. Flash compensation can only be accessed through multiple button pushes and navigating through menus on the main LCD. On the 20D, more controls are accessible from one button push. You can access auto focus mode, white balance, shooting drive mode, ISO, metering mode and flash compensation all from one button push followed by spinning either the front or rear wheels to navigate through the options. This method of control is more consistent in design, but when it comes to actual operation of the camera, it doesn’t make too much of a difference.

350D five button cross arrangement

AUTOFOCUS
Autofocus point selection is another major difference of the 350D compared to the 20D. The 20D has 9 AF points in a cross formation. It has a small 8 way joystick to quickly choose the appropriate point. The 350D has 7 AF points which are selected by pushing on the five button cross arrangement to move from point to point. It is a less elegant solution and can be frustrating if you are trying to adjust focus point while keeping your eye on the viewfinder. It is too difficult to operate the five button cross by feel alone.

The 350D also lacks the enhanced central AF point of the 20D. When using lenses faster than f/2.8 and in low light, the central AF point on the 20D is able to AF with greater accuracy and consistency than the not-so-enhanced central AF point on the 350D. Real world tests have shown that the 350D is still very capable of achieving focus lock in low light situations, but it does not have the consistent accuracy of the 20D. In situations where the 20D would be able to get a perfect, quick focus lock, the 350D will only get it right 90% of the time, and may have to hunt slightly before it gets it. With low light and moving subjects, a doubly hard situation, the 350D lags further still. In daylight or well lit conditions, the 350D is on par with the 20D.

VIEWFINDER
The 20D viewfinder is approximately 10% larger than the 350D and slightly brighter. The 350D is still perfectly usable, though it does exacerbate the difficulty of checking accurate focus in low light conditions and making manual adjustments. The eyecups on both cameras are interchangeable, the 20D’s eyecup has a larger rubber cup. Both have diopter adjustment.

Left 350D, right 20D

SHOOTING
The 20D shutter seems to fire slightly quicker than the 350D. The mirror blackout between shots is also slightly shorter on the 20D. The 350D is still very responsive, but a small difference between the two is present. The 20D has a faster, longer continuous shooting mode of around 24 frames at 5fps versus the 350D’s approximate 15 frames at 3fps. I say approximate because the number of continuous frames at 5 or 3fps depends on the speed of the card being used. Faster cards will flush the buffer faster as you are shooting, so the number of continuous possible frames increases. Nonetheless, there is a difference in the size of the buffer and for sports and fast action shooters, the 20D may be the preferable camera.

SHUTTER NOISE
The 350D is significantly quieter than the 20D. The sound has a slightly metallic whirr but it is definitely a more discreet camera than the 20D, whose noisy shutter was one of my pet peeves.

HIGH ISO COMPARISON
I used a heavy duty Manfrotto tripod, shot in RAW and converted to low compression .jpgs (quality 12 in Photoshop CS) then composited them into one final low compression .jpg (quality 8 in Photoshop CS) showing 100% crops. The color space used was sRGB, WB used was flash mode. All parameters such as sharpness and contrast were set to 0. Shot setting was f8, 1/200 using a Sigma 500 DG Super in manual mode to vary the light intensity from 1/128 to 1/8. The lens used was a Canon 50mm f/1.8 prime.
ISO1600
ISO800
ISO400
ISO100
Noise levels are very similar. I think you would be hard pressed to distinguish between the two in terms of noise. Even the sharpness is very similar. One thing worth mentioning though … I had to re-shoot two of the 350D images because there was slight mis-focussing and I never had to do this with any of my 20D test images.

MISCELLANEOUS
The 20D can do a timed mirror-lock up exposure. The 350D can do mirror-lock up exposure and timed exposures but not both simultaneously.
The 20D has a number of custom functions that are not present on the 350D, including the ability to enable ISO 3200.

CLOSING COMMENTS
The 350D Pros compared the 20D:
90% of the functionality (noise performance, shooting speed, responsiveness)
90% of the quality (fit and finish)
Much quieter shutter
For me, better ergonomics. This is very subjective and there will definitely be people who think the 350D is too small. However, if you think the 300D, 20D is too big, or liked the feel of the Pentax *istD or *istDS, then the 350D is right up your alley.
The 350D Cons compared to the 20D:
Smaller, dimmer viewfinder
3fps instead of 5fps and smaller buffer to go with it
Weaker onboard flash
More inconsistent autofocus compared to the 20D, especially in low light, moving target situations. Still, the 350D puts in a respectable performance. 85% accuracy compared to 90% accuracy of the 20D.
No ISO 3200, I rarely used this feature on my 20D but some people might
No AF joystick

General 350D Pros
Excellent 8 megapixel resolution
Excellent responsiveness, zero-wait startup, quick shot to shot
Excellent autofocus in good lighting conditions
Good low light autofocus (just not as good as the 20D, arguably the low light leader among entry level, mid level DSLRs)
Good build quality, no flexing or creaking
Light weight, compact size (this could be a con for some people)
Quiet shutter

General 350D Cons
Form factor is not for everyone. For some people, it is simply too small.
Menu is a little fiddly. Some settings require more button pushes than they should. A joystick for choosing AF point would be very desirable.

What else can I say? If the form factor is acceptable to you, then this is a highly recommended camera. It is capable of great things and at $900, it is a most worthy entry level DSLR. Any questions or comments, please direct them to mark@whichlens.com. If you liked this review, please consider buying the camera from Amazon using the links below.

A little archive of my thoughts during the production of this review. I have incorporated most of these comments into the review already, so consider the text below as “process notes”.

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12-3-2005 PM –
I shot a fundraiser event last night using the 350D with a Canon 16-35mm f2.8L lens and a 20D with a Tamron 28-75mm f2.8 lens with Sigma EF-500 DG Super flash. The lighting in the room was very subdued and when I wasn’t using the flash, I was shooting at mostly wide open apertures with ISO 800 or 1600. I shot around 150 shots with the 350D and 150 shots with the 20D, all of them in RAW format.

It was a fairly difficult test for the 350D, but I would definitely say it passed. However, I would not go as far as saying it was a 20D in a smaller body. I will list my thoughts in bullet point form. Sorry for not being more organized, I will re-write this review at a later date, but there are people chomping at the bit for this information.

1. The 350D’s battery lasted fine. I shot 150 shots with image preview turned off but checking regularly on the images at various intervals. The battery indicator unfortunately is still the same full life, little life, dead style indicator but at least the camera did not dip into little life territory. The entire event went for around 4 hours and I had the camera on almost the entire time.

2. The 350D’s viewfinder made things a little difficult at times. It is slightly smaller and darker than the 20D’s and in low light, it was impossible to say if auto-focus had accurately locked focus or not. However, the 20D is not significantly brighter or larger, and so I had the same problem with the 20D, just to a lesser extent.

3. The 350D’s auto-focus in low light was better than I expected. I was using the central AF point for most of the shots and had expected a bigger gap in performance between the 20D and the 350D’s low light auto-focus accuracy on that AF point. However, the 350D was not fool proof. There were more misfocussed shots than the 20D, i.e. there was focus lock but the shot wasn’t in focus when it was taken. Also the 350D choked when it came to fast moving objects (kids). However, given the total number of shots and the difficulty of the lighting conditions, I would say the auto-focus performed well, with 90% of the reliability and accuracy of the 20D’s auto-focus (which incidentally isn’t foolproof either).

4. The 350D with a 16-35 2.8L felt fine. I had no issue with stability or comfort. However, as I’ve said in other parts of the review, the size of the 350D suits me well, and better than the 20D.

5. The 350D’s lack of a joystick for selecting focus points was the biggest annoyance for me. I am used to keeping my eye on the viewfinder while reaching with my thumb to select AF point on the 20D’s joystick. My 20D is set to having the joystick change AF point without having to press the AF point select button first. With the 350D, I had to drop the camera from my eye, press a few buttons and then raise the camera up again to recompose which, under the circumstances, was not ideal. Given that I was shooting f/2.8, the depth of field was probably too shallow to focus with the central point and adjust composition. The side points had to be used.

6. The 350D’s responsiveness when it came to writing and viewing the RAWs was fine. I was never held up by insufficient buffer and the RAW files loaded at an acceptable speed for previewing.

7. Switching between ISO on the 350D was a mixed bag. It was convenient to be able to press the ISO button and cycle through ISO settings, but sometimes I forgot to hit SET after I had selected my ISO setting. On the 20D, you go into ISO selection mode and spin the control dial which is a slightly better method. Really though, Canon should be putting an ISO readout into the viewfinder and the status LCD, and that applies to both the 20D and the 350D.

8. On the 350D, having to hold a button to modify the front control wheel from changing shutter to changing aperture was not as big an issue as I expected.

9. The 350D’s discreet shutter was great and attracted a lot less attention than the 20D’s. There were performances during the fundraiser and I felt much more comfortable shooting with the 350D and not disturbing people in the process.

10. Like a klutz, I knocked the 350D a few times here and there. It survived. Plastic is not rice paper.

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11-3-2005 AM –
I briefly shot at a small event yesterday and am now fairly convinced now that autofocus is not the 350D’s strongest suit. In a low to moderately lit indoor room, it was hunting for focus lock using the central point only. This was with a Canon 50mm f/1.8 in a room that I have photographed in before with my 20D and the 20D definitely did lock under those situations.

Using the light 50mm f/1.8 prime lens was very enjoyable and I am appreciating better handling with this lighter body and a light lens. The shutter button is pitched closer to the horizontal plane which helped, for me at least, to make a smooth motion when I was releasing the shutter.

I also used my 16-35 f/2.8L briefly. If anyone has ever owned or used a Sony F707/717 they will know the feeling I had. The lens overwhelms the body somewhat, but it seems comfortable and actually offers good stability.

The Adobe RAW converter does not currently support the 350D. I had to use Canon’s supplied software instead to convert RAW files.
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