I have the 5D and just got the 40D tonight. The 40D focuses better in low light than the 5D with the center focus point. I used identical lens on each camera. I am impressed!
first pics with the 40D - under the lights at HS football game with the 70-200f/4
I am very impressed with focus accuracy - significantly better than the 20D. Snaps right to focus. Also the viewfinder blackout time is noticably less - camera just feels quicker.
Couple of high iso shots, shot as jpegs. The picture style thing will take some getting used to - 'standard' is pretty contrasty for my tastes.
Here are a few shots from today. I have had the camera less then 24 hours but learning it pretty fast. I found that the 40D is very fast focusing, on par easily with my mkIIn. The bird shots were with my 300 f/2.8 at 2.8. The squirrel was with my 100-400 at 100mm f5.6 I think. ISO ranging from 200-400. On the Titmouse shot it was in the shade and so I used the camera flash as fill flash.
Images converted to TIFFs in DPP then processed in Lightroom 1.1.
I really like the camera and it has proven to be an excellent upgrade to my 20D. I have no arguments with the LCD or menus. They work fine for me. I do very little chimping so maybe that is why I am not that particular about the LCD.
I have now added a section testing the high ISO noise reduction feature of the 40D with 100% crops comparing the effect of having noise reduction off & on.
Those pics are between 100-200+% crops. I also found that the AWB was pretty much on the mark. I tried the live shooting and I think I am going to like that for macro and TSE type shooting.
I have just taken out the 40D for a little spin. (It was mid-day on a bright, sunny day so lots of contrast.) However, the camera continues to impress me, but coming from a 10D, so I was hoping for substantial improvement and certainly the 40D delivers in all the ways others have said.
I expect to be able to use 100% plus crops for birds etc, based on the photos so far - the detail and focus accuracy is excellent. Even in contrasty conditions, the camera retains detail very well in shade and light, so difficult pics will be able to be tweaked in ps.
I'm heading out again shortly so hope to get some more interesting shots than the mid-day ones.
Here are a couple of pics from my walk this evening. They are all taken with the 70-200 f4L IS. And they are all just small jpg files straight from the camera, with no other processing except cropping. I was shooting raw plus small jpeg, with standard picture style.
This was taken with a Sigma 17-70 at 70mm. Speed 125, f/7.1, ISO 640 with 580EX flash, auto white balance, with highlight tone priority ON. Shot in RAW, everything set at 0, absolutely NO sharpening! I think this camera is amazing. My Rebel XT did not produce nearly as sharp images.
BogongBreeze wrote:
Here are a couple of pics from my walk this evening. They are all taken with the 70-200 f4L IS. And they are all just small jpg files straight from the camera, with no other processing except cropping. I was shooting raw plus small jpeg, with standard picture style.
And I always found it difficult to take shots of magpies with the 10D - either too black or too white. But the 40D seems to be fine.
Looks very soft to me, even if they are unprosessed, so I do not think to buy me one.
Monique, I would highly recommend waiting for a more controlled test of sharpness before passing judgment. Do you really trust a few people showing their snapshots on a message board to demonstrate the absolute capabilities of a product that has existed for only a few days?
Aaron Collins wrote:
Monique, I would highly recommend waiting for a more controlled test of sharpness before passing judgment. Do you really trust a few people showing their snapshots on a message board to demonstrate the absolute capabilities of a product that has existed for only a few days?
ditto...I see that many people don't know HOW to TEST for specific characteristics....
Noise: with exposures that seem a bit "to the left", i.e. a bit dark, the shadow noise is emphasized...some shots emphasize noise by having so much of the image out of focus where noise shows up more (not a bad idea if comparing two cameras)...
Sharpness is a "vague" issue unless the poster identifies whether the shot was a JPEG and at what settings, and if shot RAW what sharpening was done (as required in Canons) and how much and when (pre or post conversion from RAW to TIFF to JPEG)...so many variables so many people simply either don't know or don't care to share...
