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| Brand: Canon
Category: Photography
Buy New: $999.95
New (27)
Avg. Customer Rating:  319 reviews
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Floppy Disk Drive: None
Includes Software: Yes
Optical Zoom: 4.8
Display Size: 3
Maximum Focal Length: 135
Minimum Focal Length: 28
Maximum Resolution: 10
Shipping Weight (lbs): 6
Dimensions (in): 9.7 x 7.6 x 7
MPN: 40D Kit
Model: 40D Kit
UPC: 138030866607
EAN: 0013803086607
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
 Why not more mega picks? October 18, 2007
65 out of 157 found this review helpful
Nice camera, but I am a pro and all the bells and whistles mean very little to me. I've gone thru many of the reviews posted and and am surprised that how little knowledge is presented.
First off, this is a 10 meg camera....meaning for half the price you can pick up an xti and get pretty much the same results. I'm sure many of my critics will say that this isn't true, but quite honestly I have all three....the xti, the 40d, and a 5d. I've tested both the 40d and the xti against the 5d, and find little difference in output. Sure the 5d is full frame, but as most Nikon users would agree, it's mostly hype.
Sure the 40d has a larger LCD, nice but does anyone really think you can accurately preveiw photo's thru an LCD?
It is a nice camera, but if your not a pro, spend less on camera (xti) and invest more in optics!
Although, if you're a camera geek and are more concerned in looking good than having your pictures look good, go out and buy it.
Me, I'll wait for the next generation 5d, and am selling the 40d.....
 Quality issues, solved for now June 16, 2008
59 out of 74 found this review helpful
I really wanted to like this item. I had a Canon point and shoot from 2005, and got the Rebel XTi (5 stars after 10,000+ snaps of flawless performance) in December 2006. Over the next year and a half, I got several Canon lenses including 2 L lenses. When the 40D came out, it got on my radar, since I wanted something more professional, I was worried about my XTi shutter giving out, and frankly my lenses were supposedly better than my camera.
I finally made the plunge and ordered the 40D body in May. The first one was DOA and would not power up. I returned it to Amazon and got a replacement body which functioned fine for 3 weeks. Now it has developed a "stuck pixel" (a red dot in the same place on the frame...see various forums).
One solution is to clone it out, but since I occasionally do a shoot of several hundred pics and have sold some prints this is not really practical on a large scale. And it does show up on enlargements if it is in the shadows. It looks like someone is using one of those laser pointers on your pic.
I have a message in to Canon support on this. I suspect they will want me to ship the body to Irvine and have them deal with it.
I suppose I can live without it for a couple of weeks since my XTi is, as I said, working flawlessly, but I really hate shipping precision equipment like this. It is expensive (my shipment back to Amazon on the first one was over $50 with insurance) and the camera takes needless knocks.
I hope Canon reads this. My XTi and the Canon lenses have been flawless, and every picture I took that was less than great was my error. But the 40D is now down two strikes.
June 21 update: Canon recommended shipping to their service center (and they would provide prepaid shipping labels). Searching on the net I found a procedure for a do it yourself remap. Basically, you run the manual sensor clean procedure for 30 sec or so with a lens on and a cap on the lens. It seems to have worked. So the symptom is a stuck pixel from images about 600 to 900, then it went away, possibly as a result of this procedure. I will not send it back to Canon unless the problem reappears.
When it is working, the camera is 4+ stars, not ready to give it 5 yet.
 Best Camera I've Owned Yet! September 13, 2007
39 out of 40 found this review helpful
First off, I'm no camera pro - very amateur. I moved from my P&S to a DSLR this summer. My first DSLR was a Canon Rebel XT. While I was happy with the XT, it was too small for my hands. So I plunked down $$$ for this Canon EOS 40D with the 28-135mm IS lens. My review will compare the XT to the 40D (as that's all the DSLR experience I've had).
I did not purchase this Canon EOS 40D from Amazon - that is why I've had this Camera since late August.
First off, the 40D is the perfect size for my hands. The Rebel XT would leave my pinky hanging cramping my hands after a few shots. The Canon EOS 40D is perfect in terms of hand comfort. All my fingers fit on the grip making the camera feel very solid. The 40D's build quality feels a lot better than the XT.
I noticed that my Rebel XT's autofocus would search a lot over and over. This was extremely annoying especially while trying to take moving pictures. I can tell that the 40D's autofocus is a bit faster and quite a bit more accurate in those situations.
Be aware that the 40D weighs quite a bit more than the Rebel XT. I am still getting used to the weight. However, I am noticing that the heavier 40D is a lot easier to hold resulting in a clear shot than the Rebel XT (at least for me).
The viewfinder is quite a bit bigger than the Rebel XT. I also noticed that it has a "tint" look and takes some getting used to. The viewfinder is a bit brighter than the XT as well.
As far as the lens goes: I had a 28-105mm (nonIS) on my Rebel XT. The 28-135mm is awesome. It zooms further than I've ever needed it to. What I like the most is that it has a nice macro range (better than my 28-105mm lens). The autofocus is extremely fast. I'm sure the Image Stabilizer has saved many of my pictures...
At Large Fine picture sizes average around 4.5MB per shot. So be ready to have a large storage device handy nearby (I use my 500GB external drive).
All in all - I will and have recommended the Canon EOS 40D as a good DSLR for the photography enthusiasts such as myself. I will be keeping this camera for many years. After all, the camera doesn't produce pro shots - the photographer does.
A great camera - with room for improvement October 28, 2007
37 out of 40 found this review helpful
I'll start off by saying that yes, this really *is* a great camera. I bought it as body only, then added a Canon EF 100 f2.8 Macro USM lens. If you're not familiar with that lens, it is fairly heavy, and so the camera has felt heavy to me since day one. But it is the lens creating that impression.
The 40D starts up, shoots, and shuts down quickly; With the right lenses, it creates clear and consistent photographs; it is hugely flexible, pretty much to any degree you want to flex. Some of the things that have made themselves known to me by how well they work are, in no particular order, the great battery life... I use the LCD a lot, shoot a lot, and generally fuss continuously with the camera, and it just "keeps on going" which is enormously pleasing (this is with the stock battery and a BP-511A spare pack to swap in.) The feel of the camera - just a nice handful of goodness, it really suits my hands, which are large. The clarity of the viewfinder. I wear glasses, and after a little playing with the adjustment, it was *perfect*, first time ever with any camera. This thing is *fast*; it really can do 6 or so frames a second (depends on the shutter speed, of course) and the AF is also fast which makes for more images, and more good images. I love all the preset modes, and I've already had some fun in manual and a *lot* of fun in aperture priority, which pretty much suits the way I think. I particularly like the AF display and the way you can control it; I prefer a single central AF point so I can control focus at the half-press point, and the camera was perfectly agreeable to that. More points did some interesting things with depth of field, and I look forward to experimenting with that, too.
I would buy this camera body again in a heartbeat if something horrible happened to mine, like I dropped it down a well or larval (and soon to be deceased) human beings got hold of it and used it as a kickball. It also offers some optional features like wifi that sound like great fun, though I confess I can't speak to them as I've not tried them.
There are some things I think could have been done better, though, and since you're probably looking at the camera wondering what the downsides are, rather than looking for what made everyone happy, that's what I'm going to focus on.
o The worst problem, by far: The images that the camera uses to let you review your shots are FAR softer than the actual photos, to the point where you can't really tell if you got the focus nailed, or not. This is not a nitpick - this causes me to take extra shots because I literally can't tell if I've hit the mark, or not. I am hoping this can be fixed with a firmware update to the camera.
o That fabulous LCD, huge and bright and crisp, looks awful every time I look at it after shooting through the TTL viewfinder. This is because it has a huge NOSEPRINT on it. Has anyone at Canon ever taken a look at a human face? Placement of the monitor should be offsides and inset so that it isn't a grease magnet. Or do they expect me to wash my nose every time I snap a picture out in the field?
o While I'm harping on the camera's ergonomics, the power switch isn't very easy to manage. I have very short nails (I'm a guitarist and a martial artist, neither of which encourage nail growth) and getting that switch to swing on and off sometimes takes more than one try; that may, someday, lose me a photo I really wanted, especially considering how fast the camera starts up otherwise. I really wish it had a deeper pit for my finger and a more positive tractive surface to drag it on. It's too short and too smooth.
o When in Live View mode, meaning, you're presumably shooting using the LCD instead of the viewfinder (after cleaning your latest noseprints off of it, of course), autofocus doesn't work. But wait, it does. *If* you press a different button. Apparently the power budget of the camera is pushed a little too close to the edge if you use live view *and* autofocus because the mirror is locked in the up position. So they... moved AF to another button? Look, either let me do it, or don't let me do it, but quit changing what the controls do underneath my fingers. That's just poor interface design. Maybe you should have turned it off by default, then let us blatant power-spenders turn it back on, kind of like how ISO 3200 works on this camera (it's a menu option, not initially enabled. Requires RTFM or at least someone telling you what to do.) Anyway, I don't like how this works. At all. But it's a nitpick.
o When you're not in live view mode, the camera will display your shot in the LCD for 2 seconds, then blank (this time is adjustable, somewhat, in the menus. But 2 seconds is the shortest time for it to work at all.) You have to wait for the preview to go away (2 seconds) to enter play mode so you can really take a look at it. I think it should directly enter play when it is in that 2-second "grace" period after the shot; the fact that it doesn't costs me time, at least in some situations. And time, in photography, can mean lost shots.
o Print button - come on. I can think of a hundred things that would be more important to put on a button than "print." That's just... silly.
o I would have liked to have infrared remote firing of the camera. This is MUCH more flexible than the 2s or 10s delayed firing option it has now. You can go out and sit with a group and putter around indefinitely with infrared; even 10 seconds isn't a lot of time to get out there, regulate your breathing, meld into the group photo, and stop staring down your 3rd cousin Hotisha's bodice. Uh, not that I would do such a thing. No. Not me. Cough.
o It isn't easy (meaning, you have to use a deep menu) to clean out all the images on the CF card. Should have been, really. it *is* easy to delete images one at a time.
o The weather flap on the USB connection (and external fire, strobe, and video connectors) are a little difficult to grasp (I have essentially no nails, remember), and they really are just rubber flaps - I fully expect them to wear out, as they don't have proper hinges or otherwise use reasonable bearing surfaces. I *really* don't like having to struggle with the flap every time I want to grab pictures from the camera, which is several times a day on days when I'm *not* seriously shooting. I might *have* to buy that wifi accessory...
These are, in the end, mostly problems I would characterize as "nitpicks", and with the exception of the soft review images, certainly nothing to get in a frenzy over (well, maybe the placement of the LCD screen too... but that certainly isn't a problem only found in Canon products.) This is a fabulous camera; I can't imagine anyone actually regretting buying one unless they've been working with far, far more expensive gear than this. I gave it five stars, and that's just how I feel about it.
About me: I've been into photography since about 1965, my last camera was an Olympus E20, a 5 MP camera with an *excellent* all-occasion lens, macro to telephoto, and an insatiable appetite for batteries. Moving up to a 40D was a great experience for me. I'm not a pro, maybe semi-pro is fair, my experience with cameras includes both BW and color developing, all manner of large format boxes, several 35 mm cameras, and ten or eleven digital cameras from the 320x240 dawn of digital cameras to today. I am also an engineer (EE) and the author of a very extensive image processing software suite and several RAW processing plugins; consequently I am intimately familiar with how digital cameras actually work.
Am i the only one to think that the display sucks big time? September 13, 2007
35 out of 251 found this review helpful
it's big, ok, but the pixels are so so big and the colors so inaccurate. When in the field, it's impossible to say if the focus is right or not. Makes me strongly think about bringing it back.
The Nikon D300 will have 922k pixels, the Canon 30D only 230k!!!!
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