Emma got me a brand new Canon EOS 40D for my birthday!

I’ve been taking pictures with a EOS 20D for the last 3 years, so this is 2 generations of upgrade for me, and I’m loving it already. The first impressions so far are also good. It looks pretty much identical to the 20D, but it feels a bit bigger and handles as a steady brick of phototaking machine. The first thing I noticed, obviously, was the big. No wait, BIG lcd screen on the back where you can see a lot of picture. I always had to zoom in on pictures to see if they were any good in certain areas. Now i can just go through them and see right away if they’re gonna be any good.

The second improvement I noticed when I took my first picture. The shutter-noise is significantly less than the 20D. It has a bit of mechanical feel to it, it doesn’t make 2 big *clicks* but feels like one. Hard to explain, but I like it ;)

And then there’s the new Live View mode where you can actually get a live picture of what the lens sees through the big LCD screen. It doesn’t let you autofocus while it’s active, but i like manual focussing anyway. And besides, it makes sense. I used the live view when I took the camera for a spin yesterday and I must say I find it useful. I’ve been trying to take some HDR pictures, and when the camera is low to the ground with a tripod it’s very useful to be able to see what the viewfinder sees through the LCD screen instead of having to crouch and twist your head in impossible ways to be able to see what the hell you’re doing.

The 40D is supposed to be much faster due to its processor and what not. Haven’t been able to try that out other than just doing a high speed burst on 1/8000 to hear what it sounded like. So I will get back to that later.

Another thing was the Auto ISO. On my 20D i pretty much always had ISO on 100, so I was a bit worried when I saw the ISO metering jumping between 400 and 800 while i was outdoor in the sun. But the generated NOISE, up to 800 anyway, is redundant. So I’m quite happy with that functionality. Allows for faster shutterspeeds and smaller apertures while handheld shooting. Not sure what it will do when indoors and in the evening, will try that out tonight.

So .. so far so awesome. I’m really loving the camera and am just thinking of what to test out next. A new camera is so motivating. New functionality to play with, new settings to test out, and new techniques to explore. So I will keep you updated on my findings over the next couple of days.

Thanks a lot Em for the wonderful present!

Happy picture hunting,

Hyra