My thoughts on the Canon 40D
Recently, one of my friends felt pity for my cameraless plight and let me borrow his 40D over the weekend so I could take pictures of my sons at two Halloween parties.
Coming from the 5D, the 40D is certainly a different camera. I suspect that many people right now are trying to make up their mind whether to purchase a new 50D or a used 5D, so I thought I would offer my opinions on the differences (the 50D and 40D are very similar cameras).
First, I am not going to dwell on the well known aspects such as image quality and noise. There are many well respected web sites out there that will go into detail for these cameras. In general, though, I felt the 40D was a very good camera. Knowing that its high ISO capabilities are not as strong as the 5D, I didn’t push it very much. On a few occasions I went up to ISO 800, but generally tried to keep it as low as possible.
As the 40D is a new camera, it has a number of improvements over the 5D. The following are my impressions of them.
Dust removal – As with all newer Canon cameras, the 40D has automatic dust removal. I tested this by taking some shots with my MP-E 65, which is the king of all lenses when it comes to showing dust. I did find significantly less dust than I am accustomed to, particularly in the corners. However, the images were certainly not dust free, and I will still have some cloning work to do. The dust removal feature does reduce the amount of cloning I need to do though.
LCD – The 40D has a much nicer LCD than my 5D. This helped significantly when making decisions about which images to keep. I suspect with zoom I could have a good indication of how in focus an image is, but I didn’t have time for that. Still, images I thought were in focus on the viewfinder turned out to be out of focus when I downloaded them. I suspect the viewfinder on the 5D Mark II will be an improvement here.
Live View – I didn’t use this feature at all, and suspect I won’t use it much on the 5D Mark II except for the taking movies. The MP-E 65 requires eye coordination and Live View is basically useless in this aspect. When taking pictures of the kids, I felt it was unnecessary.
Viewfinder – Displaying the ISO in the viewfinder was very helpful.
Bursts – the 40D has a much higher frames per second than the 5D. In practice, I didn’t really use this. My preferred style is to anticipate the moment, then take the shot. I never pushed my old 5D in terms of burst and didn’t come close to using the feature for the 40D.
Autofocus – This is very hard to quantify, but based on the results I believe the AF in the original 5D is better. In similar settings and lighting conditions I have had more ‘keeper’ shots, despite the fact that I used the same settings.
Feel – The 5D is certainly a larger camera and ‘feels’ more professional. Perhaps it is just my familiarity with the 5D, but it feels much better in my hands.
Crop factor – This was very welcome when taking macro shots and when using my telephoto lens. It was of course unwelcome when using my wide angle lens. In general though I didn’t feel that I got any shots I wouldn’t have gotten with my 5D. The depth of field was also a bit nicer in the macro shots, as the 40D has a bit more than the 5D. Still, my style is to generally blur the background a bit, which is more difficult when you have more DOF.
Pop up flash – I used hot shoe flashes whenever necessary, but Nelya used the pop up flash. I offered to put one of my flashes on the camera, but she didn’t want to bother. In my opinion, the shots show the effect of a weak uni-directional flash – all the more reason that I prefer to not have a pop up flash on my camera.
Wife’s opinion – Nelya actually used the camera for the first party as I volunteered to help with the event. She didn’t like the camera at all – saying that it felt more like a ‘toy’ compared to my old camera.
In general I think the 40D is a great camera. When choosing between an old 5D and the newer 50D (which is essentially the 40D with a better LCD and 50% more pixels), I would choose the 5D simply because I prefer having less DOF and I like the feel of the camera more. For purely macro and telephoto reasons though, the 50D certainly has its advantages.
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Tags: 40D, 5d, camera, canon, comparison, photography
Great writeup.
It is interesting how much one can get accustomed to a tool. For example, switching from 40D to 5D gave me a feel of a worse auto-focus. It’s probably just different behavior and after mastering one tool, the little changes are annoying. Sounds like the new 5D will work great for you.
I’ve just gone from a 40D to 5D so I read your thoughts on the two bodies with interest.
I think we both came to some of the same conclusions, but having had use of the 40D’s Live View (especially for macro work) I feel it’s a feature I’m going to miss.
That, plus the sensor cleaning (I’ll have to buy a blower now!) and the lack of auto ISO in AV mode.
I do love the shallower depth of field with the 5D and I can’t wait to have a proper landscape session once I get a full frame replace for my EF-S 10-22mm lens.