Professional Capabilities that an Amatuer can Appreciate

This review is intended to help an amateur evaluate the 40D to decide whether or not to step up to this professional-level camera.

The Canon EOS 40D is a professional-level Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera that produces very high quality 10 megapixel photos. A 10 MP photo has good enough resolution to get a quality enlargement of every typical size, or even a poster. This means that for an amateur this camera will do more than you want. It is feature-laden and built solidly; it will serve an amateur well for years to come.

Features on this model include the standard photo settings which will allow a user to chose a quick photo style and shoot it without much knowlege. Choices in the Basic Zone include the standard, shoot-all setting, and specialty settings include portait, landscape, macro (close-up), sports, night portrait, and flash off. Using these settings is easy and quick; turning it on and setting a dial on the top sets goof-proof settings to shoot from.

In my experience, however, these settings will not satisfy everyone. For instance, the Sports setting sets the ISO at 400, which means that it will shoot with a fast speed, but not lightning fast. Blurring will still occur with many types of shots, for instance racing (boats, cars, etc) or a bird in flight. This is also an ISO setting that is not high enough to avoid needed a flash; one would need an ISO closer to 800 or 1200 to accomplish this. Since the camera is able to use an ISO as high as 1600, one can certainly set the camera to achieve the desired results using the Creative Zone programming functions; this zone allows for complete control over the camera's functions.

In the Creative Zone, the user can set every imaginable variance. Turning the same dial allows the user to program many of the camera settings. The automatic exposure can be adjusted to emphasize either the depth of field (focus depth) or the shutter speed; one can also adust other functions (such as cancelling the flash, or the number of shots possible when the shutter is pressed). Other Creative Zone settings allow the user to insure that all the subects are in focus (for instance, when shooting down a line of people, or a long table at a dinner party). Users can also custom set and save three combinations of settings that can be registered as Camera User Settings. Using this part of the dial would allow you to save your own Sports setting, for instance, to offset the limitations described in the paragraph above.

Auto-focus on this unit is very quick. This is necessary for catching those fast shots. There is a nine point auto-focus area, which means that the camera will quickly decide which of nine areas it should focus on, and then set the lens accordingly. A red marker lights up in the view finder to tell you what areas were focused on; this way, if you want to take antoher, you can move the camera slightly to get it to focus on another part of the frame. Alternatively, using the various creative modes, you can also direct the camera to focus using a specified point. This helps if you want to focus on something in the foreground, but the camera's auto-focus wants to focus on something else.

Since this is a preofessional camera, high-speed continuous shooting is possible at a rate of 6.5 frames per second. This will be fast enough to satisfy any amateur. I've used it to photograph jet ski and wake board competitions and I can easily get ten useable frames shot on each pass from the competition.

The camera body is fairly compact, but it is certainly not light. I moved up from a 35mm Canon Rebel, keeping the same lenses for use with this model. I immediately noticed this unit weighs more, which makes sense given the additional features a professional model offers such as the high-speed shooting. Also, a digital unit has an LCD monitor on the back that a film camera does not.

The LCD monitor on this unit is plenty large, and can be set to show you the photo you just took or the the photo along with a variety of infomration about the settings. As with most LCD screens, it is nearly impossible to see it in bight sunlight. Contrast and brightness settings can be adjusted to help here, but you have to go into the menus to do so.

The menus on this camera are extensive and thorough. A user can take advantage of them to set everything imagineable; to do so will keep him busy for literally hours. In fact, there are so many of them that a hobbiest should plan on taking multiple sittings to go through all of them, as the array is quite overwhelming. I am quite sure that I have already forgotten half of what I learned about this camera in the four months that I have owned it, so while I now understand many of these menus, and I have the camera set to my own desired preferences, I would have to familiarize myself with the menus again before I could competently change the settings.

The camera comes with adequate software to download the photo files to your home PC and edit them as desired. It also comes with a handy program called Photo Stitch, which allows you to take a series of photos and glue them together into one large panorama or mosaic. I have used this software many times so far, not only for photos but also for items I have scanned into the computer.

The battery that comes with the camera is excellent. Battery Pack BP-511A comes included, and I have only used one charge in four months and well over 1000 photos. I can see no reason to need a second battery to switch out.

When buying this unit, you should also buy a CF card. This is the memory card on which the digital image is stored. I got a 4 GB card, which is large enough to hold over 800 large images (10 MP size). If I chose to take photos of lower quality, the card would hold even more.

This camera is a quality unit, well-built, and it feels good in the hand. I recommend it for any hobbiest interested in more than an entry level DSLR.