Photo answers review
Photo answers rating
Features & handling
When the EOS 30D was announced, there was a certain amount of disappointment that it wasn’t vastly different from the 20D that it was replacing. It’s likely that many people will think the same about the 40D. Rather than thinking of this as a brand new camera it might be easier to see it as more of a Canon EOS 10D Mark IV. That’s not to say that there aren’t a lot of improvements, as there quite clearly are, but none of it is really revolutionary stuff.
There’s a new 10.1MP sensor, which most buyers will consider it to be the standard for current D-SLRs, and a great improvement on the 30D’s uninspiring 8.2MP resolution. The shooting speed has been improved too and is now up to 6.5fps from the 30D’s 5fps – great news for keen action photographers. The screen size has gone up from 2.5in to 3in but with the addition of Live View, as seen on the EOS-1D series.
In addition to the usual range of exposure and scene modes, Canon has also added three custom modes that allow the photographer to store their most-used setting and these can be accessed with a turn of the mode dial. It’s a great feature that not enough D-SLR’s feature for our liking. Also, the My Menu function has been brought down to the 40D from the EOS-1D series. This clever feature allows the photographer to add their most-used menu settings to a shortcut menu to allow for faster access. As with all of Canon’s latest D-SLRs, the EOS 40D has the integrated sensor cleaning system.
The camera comes with the usual batch of Picture Styles (landscape, faithful etc) as the rest of the recent Canon D-SLRs but it comes supplied with a Picture Style editor that allows you to fine-tune the styles and save them for the camera to use while you are shooting. In general though, rather then the 40D having a whole new set of features, it’s more a case of great hand-me-downs from the professional models but at an affordable price.
The biggest change to the 40D is the huge 3in screen on the back of the camera. Its addition means the buttons previously located down the left of the screen are now positioned along the bottom of the LCD. This means that the playback button is now about as far away from the natural position of either of your thumbs as is possible on the camera, whereas the menu button is located to the top left of the screen, where the left thumb can more comfortably reach it and still maintain a firm grip on the camera.
The camera body itself is evidence of Canon’s experience of designing cameras and there’s finally some proof of ergonomics behind the design with the addition of a slight groove in the grip to make it more comfortable for your fingers. All the new technology added has only bumped up the weight by 40g to 740g compared the EOS 30D’s 700g, so it’s still around 100g lighter than the Nikon D300 with which it will be competing against in the next year or so.
Performance
While the EOS 40D may be uninspiring in other areas, it certainly has something to shout about in terms of performance. The write time for a full JPEG is an impressive 0.88 seconds – making it the fastest D-SLR we’ve ever tested. It clocks in at 1.5 seconds for a full RAW file and 1.2 seconds for the new S RAW file, which is about one quarter of the full resolution and half the size.
The autofocus is up to Canon’s usual standard and is fast and responsive, especially with the f/2.8 centre point. Any users with a 10D, 20D or even 30D will quickly note the responsiveness of this camera, and the speed with which you can shoot, review the image and carry on is a massive improvement over those models.
The EOS 40D is capable of great results, with accurate colours, vivid tones and the minimum of noise. In fact, when you enlarge shots taken at ISO 100 noise is so minimal that you may need to double take. The results are excellent and again set the standards on what to expect from a 10MP D-SLR. We’d place the results from the EOS 40D right up there with the best yet seen. For existing Canon 10D or 20D users the quality is a serious improvement, while the increase in resolution is enough to prove it’s worth it over the 30D.
Verdict
The £799 price-tag of the EOS 40D places it somewhere between the Nikon D80 (£510) and D300 (£1299) in the current market. That’s probably where we would place it based on features and handling too, as it’s not quite as rugged as the D300 but has more to offer advanced enthusiasts than the D80. Although it’s not quite the serious jump that many would like, the EOS 40D will fulfil most, if not all, of the enthusiast photographer’s needs.
| Weight/size (WxHxD) |
740g/146x108x74mm |
| Effective resolution |
10.1MP |
| Lens mount |
Canon EF/EF-S |
| Focal length conversion |
1.6x |
| Aspect ratio |
3:2 |
| LCD monitor size |
3in (230K dots) plus Live View mode |
| File formats |
JPEG, RAW (CR2) |
| Card type |
CF |
| Exposure modes |
Auto, program, aperture-priority, shutter-priority, manual, custom modes 1-3 and six scene modes |
| Metering modes |
Evaluative, centre-weighted, partial and spot |
| Autofocus |
Nine-point (crosstype) |
| ISO range |
100-1600 (expandable to 3200) |
| Battery type |
1x BP-511A Lithium-ion |
| Software supplied |
ZoomBrowser EX/ImageBrowser, PhotoStitch, EOS Utility, Picture Style Editor |
| Start-up time |
Less than 1 second |
| Write times |
0.88 second JPEG, 1.5 seconds RAW, 1.2 second S RAW |
| Shutter speed range |
30 seconds to 1/8000sec + Bulb |
| Flash sync |
1/250sec |
| Continuous shooting speed |
6.5fps for 75 JPEGs or 17 RAWs |
