Digital Trends

Canon EOS 40D February 19th, 2008 | by David Elrich

Features Cont'd

The rear of the 40D features a large, bright viewfinder with .95x magnification. Next to it is sturdy diopter control to fine tune it for your eyesight. There’s a big 3-inch LCD screen rated 230K pixels up from a 2.5-inch screen on the older 30D. This gives you more real estate to check out your images, deal with menus and frame shots with Live View, another feature not found on the 30D. We’ll talk more about this in the Performance And Use section. There are a series of buttons below the screen rather than flanking it such as playback, delete, info, picture style. This is no big deal, just different. The on/off switch is here too and it’s in an awkward spot; Canon engineers should move it to a more convenient locale. One thing the engineers did do right was add a sensor-cleaning function so that every time you turn the camera on or off, it performs a dust removal operation from the front of the sensor. (For the record almost all new D-SLRs have some form of dust removal.)

To the right of the screen is a large control dial with center set button for making menu adjustments. You also make adjustments with the jog wheel on the pistol grip and the 8-way multi-controller. It’ll take a little time to figure out which control handles the various adjustments but Canon’s manuals as well as some fiddling on your own will help you master it. Other buttons on the back include menu, direct print, AF-ON (AF start), FE lock, AF point selector/enlarge. Almost all have multiple uses so get ready to use the manual to learn the options (sorry but you really need to do this to get the most out of this camera; if you think it’s a turn-off, don’t spend the money or just shoot in Auto).

On the right side is the CompactFlash card slot (it takes Types I&II). On the left are compartments for video out and USB2.0 connection as well as PC and remote control terminals for connecting flashes and, well, remote controls, again options usually not found on cheaper models. On the bottom is the battery compartment; the battery is rated 1,100 shots without the flash, 800 if you use 50 percent of the time, a very good number.

I referred to the EOS 40D owner’s manual earlier and it’s 196-pages! There is a pocket guide but it only hits the basics. Other accessories supplied with the camera include a strap, battery/charger, USB and AV cables as well as two CD-ROMs with the EOS Digital Solution disk (ver. 15.1) and a software instruction disk. There’s also booklets for using the supplied IS lens and macro lenses. One can never complain about the bundle Canon supplies—if only they’d throw in Adobe Photoshop CS3 or Lightroom—now that would be cause for celebration!

Once the battery was charged, I popped in an 8GB 133x Kingston CF card, snapped in the 18-55mm IS lens and started taking photographs.

Image Courtesy of Canon