Resistance was Futile

I picked up a Canon EOS 40D. That’s not really a great surprise, I suppose. I’d been talking about it. On Friday night after work, I was in Tysons Corner and stopped by Penn Camera expecting to be told they didn’t have any. Instead, they said they had one left and did I want. it. I had to say yes. It just didn’t seem right that they might finish the day with any left in stock.

I haven’t had much chance to use it so this isn’t a review. But here are some observations compared to my 20D in terms of ergonomics.

The obvious change is the back LCD. It’s much bigger but does seems to have some color sparkly thing going with it. So, a step up and a step down, but I think it was a net improvement. That LCD screen can show the camera settings, ala the XTi, if desired, but more importantly, it can finally display RBG histograms for photos.

The viewfinder is noticeably nicer than the 20D and any of Canon’s other APS-C cameras I’ve handled. Plus it finally displays the ISO in the viewfinder.

The shutter sounds is notably muted from the 20D. That’s a nice change, plus the slight bump in FPS.

Though the battery grip from the 20D fits, my Really Right Stuff L bracket won’t. That’s not really a surprise, but I was hoping.

Live view is cool, and perhaps useful. Time will tell.

I haven’t taken any real photos with it yet and haven’t had a chance to look at high ISO image performance but I’m looking forward tot he chance.

Like just about every other person on the planet who uses Canon cameras, I don’t understand why they dedicate a button to the useless “print” function without making it user assignable. I’d love to make it a mirror lockup key. But, at least I can assign mirror lockup to the “my menu” section to make it more quickly accessible. Or I could put it in one of the three “user settings” groups. But, given how important camera buttons are and how generally right Canon gets most of the ergonomics, you’d think they’d not waste a button that 99.9% of users will never se.

Still, there was enough of a bump in features to make it worthwhile to upgrade, at least on paper. I’m looking forward to doing some real shooting with it see how it performs.