Canon EOS 40D initial impressions

 *** I have already published a full review article for the 40D, you can view it here.

I have played with my new 40D for a few days now since I bought it on Sunday, so it’s time to write about some of my initial impression on this new camera.

1. The viewfinder view is bright and is much bigger than the 20D/30D. Definitely a nice upgrade. It’s great to finally have ISO visible in the viewfinder at all times.

2. The Canon 20D makes a really loud shutter/mirror noise. The 40D is much quieter, the sound is very muted. If the 20D sounds like a gun, the 40D sounds like a 20D with a silencer on.

3. Autofocus seemed faster especially under low light situation. Probably because all the 9 focus points are now cross-type, all the focus sensors are much more sensitive than on the Canon 20D/30D. Previously, on the 20D, the peripheral sensors hunt a lot under low light situation, sometimes it was almost impossible to lock on a focus. On the 40D now, the peripheral sensors all locked focus instantly just like the centre focus point.

4. The 3″ LCD is positively a huge improvement over the tiny 1.8″ LCD on the 20D. It is probably not such a big improvement over the 2.5″ LCD on the 30D though. Without comparing the high resolution 3″ LCD on Nikon D3 and D300, which I have not seen and are not on sale yet, I would just say the 3″ LCD on the 40D is bright and clear with good viewing angle.

5. The menu structure has changed a lot compared to the 20D/30D, but is easy to use nevertheless.

6. Liveview and autofocus with Liveview is easy to use, once you have made the correct settings in the custom menu.

To switch between Liveview and normal shooting (provided you have enabled Liveview in the custom menu), all you need to do is press the “SET” button and the mirror would be raised instantly and you’ll get a Liveview on the LCD.

For autofocus in Liveview, there is a small rectangle in the LCD which is the focus area, you can move this rectangle freely to the point where you want to focus with the multi-controller. You can then magnify the view at he rectangle up to 10x for manual focusing.

To autofocus, press the AF ON button once and the mirror will raise up for a second or so, only the centre AF point works though. To shoot, just press the shutter release button as usual and it will shoot instantly.

To get out of Liveview mode, all you need to do is to press the SET button again.

7. Image quality with the 40D is very similar to the 20D/30D. At high ISO setting of 1600, my impression is that, their noise level are very similar. However, the 40D sensor has 2MP more photocells than the sensor in the 20D. So the size of the photocells in the 40D sensor would be smaller than on the 20D. Theoretically, if all other things being equal, you would expect that the 40D will be noisier than the 20D at high ISO, but since they essentially showed the same level of noise, Canon has actually improved the noise profile on the 40D.

Personally, I have never had any complaints with the high ISO performance with the 20D, so I am happy with the high ISO performance of the 40D also. Of course it would be nice if Canon was able to achieve some major breakthrough in technology and achieve ultra low high ISO noise in the 40D, but my personal view is that the 40D high ISO performance is already very good and certainly good enough for the majority of user.

You can see some test shots at ISO 1600 and ISO 1600 comparison with 20D at the links below:-

Canon EOS 40D ISO1600 Test Shots

Canon 40D vs 20D ISO 1600 Comparison

*** I have a few new updates today:-

Canon 40D vs 20D high ISO test

Canon EOS 40D vs 20D External Appearance

The new BG-E2N grip vs the old BG-E2 grip