What Cords Come With The Canon Eos 40d Camera

Editors' note: The competitive landscape for this camera has inverse since our review, and nosotros've updated the text and ratings to reflect that and the model'southward lower cost. The design rating goes from a ix to an eight--while still a nicely designed model, it's not particularly outstanding anymore--and features drops from an 8 to a 7 for its efficient-but-now-relatively-mundane set of capabilities. Text changes include comparisons to newer models.

Representing a more than significant leap over the EOS 30D than the 30D was beyond the 20D, the Canon EOS 40D features a redesigned torso and card system, introduces some long-requested features, integrates some of the new applied science from the EOS 1D Mark Three and delivers a nice bump in resolution and performance. All of that, plus a solid overall increment in speed over its predecessor, brand information technology a no-brainer upgrade from previous models, a substantially better option than its down-the-line sibling, the EOS Rebel XSi and a nice complement for the EOS-1D Mark III.

Canon offers 2 configurations of the 40D: body only, and a kit with the veteran f/3.5-to-f/five.six, 28mm-to-135mm IS USM lens. Taking into account the camera'south i.6x focal-length multiplier yields an angle of view equivalent to that of a 44.8mm-to-216mm lens on a 35mm camera. That's a bit narrow, though; personally, I think the absolutely pricey EF 24mm-to-70mm f/2.8L USM covers a more useful general-purpose range of 38.4mm to 112mm. Alternatively, you may want to wait until later this year when the inexpensive EF-S 18mm-to-55mm f/3.5-to-f/5.six IS is slated to get available.

Despite the growth of the LCD from 2.5 to 3 inches, the body size and weight of the 40D is the aforementioned as that of the 30D: 4.2x5.7x2.nine inches and roughly ane.8 pounds. Equally with its predecessor, the body feels very solid and well made, one of the important advantages it has over the flimsier-feeling Rebel series. Catechism added grit- and weatherproofing on the CF slot, the buttons, and all connection points, and information technology implemented the same integrated sensor-cleaning organization that's in the Mark III series. The latter vibrates the sensor to dislodge dust during showtime-up and shut-down (pressing the shutter cancels cleaning during start-upwardly), and if that doesn't work, a Grit Delete Data selection enables the photographic camera to analyze and remember where it senses grit and algorithmically remove it from photos.

The larger LCD did make it necessary to rejigger some of the controls. The Review, Delete, Spring, Info, and new Picture Styles buttons at present sit below the LCD rather than to the side, and the buttons are substantially smaller than earlier. They also sit flatter and more than flush with the body, making them harder to feel and press. Forth the same lines, the Metering/WB, AF/Drive, ISO/Wink compensation, and LCD backlight buttons, which seem to rise slightly higher than previously, feel identical and impossible to differentiate from ane another.

On the upside, the 40D has a bigger, more than tactile style dial, with iii slots for User settings (the 30D had none). Although I find these invaluable, there'due south one behavior that really annoys me: if the photographic camera goes to sleep, information technology resets any setting overrides you've made while in one of the user modes.

Catechism also redesigned the grip, adding a curved indentation only below the ledge with the shutter push button, where your centre finger falls. It's a subtle just dainty ergonomic enhancement that makes the grip feel merely a little more than solid. Canon likewise redesigned the menu organization, which is now far easier to read and navigate. (Click through a slide show discussion of the body design and menus.)

A few new features take also popped up with the 40D. Nigh notably, it offers a Live View fashion, with a meliorate, more than flexible implementation than that of the 1D Marker Three--or most others, for that affair. Unlike its big brother, you lot can autofocus in Live View; when yous press the AF-ON button, it flips the mirror down, focuses, then flips the mirror support then the focus-corrected view appears on the screen. On the downside, it focuses simply using the center AF area. And regardless of focus mechanism, information technology uses but evaluative metering.

Equally with a point-and-shoot camera, you lot can pull upwardly a magnified view to help with manual focusing. In addition, three then-called "silent shooting" options allow you lot to control the shutter pall reset to delay the noise and minimize vibration. Though hardly "silent," the 40D does take ane of the quieter Live View modes I've encountered. You lot tin can also gear up the metering timer, how long the camera holds and displays the metering information after you release the shutter button, anywhere from 4 seconds to thirty minutes. I'd beloved this feature to be available for full general shooting rather than limit it to Live View. All that said, Live View shooting continues to be a bit of a niche application for dSLRs; generally, information technology's suitable simply if your subject area matter allows for a tripod and optimally a connected PC for remote control. Keep in listen that the sensor can go warm in this mode, and as Catechism warns, increased heat volition result in increased image dissonance.

For more meat-and-potatoes changes, the 40D at present supports Auto ISO in all modes beyond total Machine, which comes in handy every now and then. The new viewfinder system supports interchangeable focusing screens and, for all you lot four-eyed photogs, offers a relatively loftier 22mm eyepoint and slightly greater magnification than that of the 30D, 0.95 vs. 0.90. Canon also added an sRaw format, which shoots small, two.5-megapixel raw images. I don't see the utility of this feature, but it's easy enough to ignore. Non so like shooting fish in a barrel to ignore is the increased spot size for the spot meter, upward to 3.8 percent of the viewfinder from the 30D's iii.five percent. (Hither'southward why that's bad.)

Other features--and the 40D has enough--remain pretty much unchanged. These include iii nine-signal autofocus modes: Unmarried-shot, AI Servo tracking autofocus, and AI Focus, which switches betwixt Single and AI Servo if it detects that the field of study has moved. Unfortunately, the AI Focus can't tell the departure betwixt subject movement and the photographer doing a focus-and-recompose, so you're ordinarily better off picking Single or Servo and sticking with it. Four metering modes--evaluative, partial metering (approximately 9 percent of the viewfinder), the aforementioned three.8 percent spot, and center-weighted average metering--provide reasonable flexibility. It's got a full slate of white-balance settings, including bracketing and custom corrections along the blue, bister, magenta and dark-green axes; colour temperature; and manual. A few scene program modes--portrait, landscape, macro, sports, and night portrait--broaden the semimanual program, aperture- and shutter-priority, automatic depth-of-field AE, and manual exposure modes. Relevant maximums include a peak shutter speed of 1/8,000 second and height flash sync speed of one/250 second.

Though the 40D isn't missing any feature in item--though I could make a case for mechanical image stabilization--one feature I'd really similar to see trickle down from the 1D series, and which I think makes a lot of sense in a camera of this form, is the power to define acceptable ranges for aperture, shutter speed, and ISO sensitivity when shooting in ane of the exposure-priority modes.

As for performance, the 40D is reasonably speedy for its grade, and roughly 20 percent faster overall than the 30D. But it still can't keep up with the faster D80. From a cold start to first shot takes only 0.3 second, and under optimal conditions it can focus and shoot in only 0.four 2d. A good for you buffer and fast card writes allows the 40D to maintain that stride from shot to shot for both JPEG and raw. Flash recycle time adds slightly less than 0.2 2nd to that. The 40D has slow- and loftier-speed outburst modes which test out at 3.i frames per 2nd (fps) and six.3fps, respectively; the slower fashion is for preventing buffer lockups when using a slow CF card. I likewise plant the slower way a useful speed selection when shooting with the Speedlite 580EX wink with sluggishly recycling alkaline batteries. Notation that in the case of the 40D a "ho-hum" CF card does not mean "anything slower than UDMA." Information technology doesn't back up UDMA, and seems to have sufficient buffer to maintain maximum throughput fifty-fifty with a last-generation SanDisk Extreme 3 (133x) menu.

However, the camera does hit one sour operation note: leisurely low-contrast focusing, which ratchets up low-light lag to ane.two seconds. This is despite Catechism's merits of a 30 percent increment in AF calculation speed. Though not uncommon for a dSLR, we really look better, especially for this price class. Canon rates the battery, the aforementioned 1,390mAH BP-511A used by the 30D, at 1,100 shots (sans flash). Though this is reasonably long, Canon lags behind many of the other manufacturers for providing intelligent ability brandish and estimates of power remaining. The large, brilliant LCD is like shooting fish in a barrel to view, merely like even the best camera LCDs, information technology renders relatively poor representations of colour and exposure.

Sample photos from the Canon EOS 40D

Photos evidence fantabulous dynamic range, with no visible clipping in the highlights or shadows (of correct exposures). Though they definitely fall within an acceptable range, automatic white residue under artificial lights tends to exist a bit warm, and even manual white-residuum shots measure a tad green-heavy. Automatically counterbalanced sunlit shots render a bit cool. With the exception of certain types of spot-metering cases that I discuss in the slide evidence, all of the metering schemes delivered excellent, balanced exposures. The 40D'due south ISO sensitivity caps out at ISO 3,200 and remains visually unobtrusive as high equally ISO 800. Across that, you can spot dissonance, but it doesn't leap out of the shadows and knock you over the head.

For Canon devotees, the EOS 40D is a great camera and remains an first-class pick compared with most of the dSLRs in and around its price class--with one exception. Despite its many attractions, the Canon EOS 40D doesn't conspicuously outshine its closest competitor, the Nikon D90. Though the 40D has the obvious advantage for activity shooting--about double the burst rate and a college acme shutter speed--the D90 mostly feels a fleck faster and more responsive for single-shot photography, and offers video capture (though flawed) and a college resolution. I think the 40D ultimately does deliver better photograph quality, simply some people might discover the differences more than subtle. And, of course, the more expensive Canon EOS 50D remains a wild card until we've tested it. So for the moment, the 40D gets a hearty, if not wholly unqualified, endorsement.

Shooting speed (in seconds)
(Shorter bars bespeak improve performance)

Time to commencement shot

Raw shot-to-shot time

Shutter lag (dim light)

Shutter lag (typical)

Nikon D90

0.2

0.6

0.9

0.four

Typical continuous-shooting speed (in frames per second)
(Longer confined indicate better performance)