Canon EOS 40D 10.1MP Digital SLR Camera with EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Standard Zoom Lens

Pros:- 10.1MP- Fast 6.5fps- Solid and rugged magnesium body- Picture styles and C1, C2, and C3 functions- Massive and intuitive menu feature- Dials and buttons for a faster and manual controls of f-stop and shutter- The kit lens is better than the rebel series'- 3.0" LCD- Very fast start-up time and virtually no distinguishable shutter lag- Plethora of shooting options and functions available- EF and EF-S compatible- RAW, JPEG, or RAW+JPEG shooting- Canon software DPPCons:- 1.6x crop reduces effectiveness of wide-angle- Pop-up flash is near useless- 3.0" LCD is lacking in color and resolutionThoughts:I've upgraded to the 40D from my Canon SD870 IS and the jump is huge. Even though the 50D and 5D mark II is out, the 40D is still a good value. I've used this over the course of 6 months and I love it! I have taken this exploring many places: in rain, sun, and humid and have used 5,000 actuations. It's rated to about 100,000 actuations so I've fine just shooting away. I've used this body in conjunction with my 24-70mm f/2.8L and 70-200mm f/2.8L IS. It is a solidly constructed camera with those L lenses. A weather sealed package allowed me to shoot in light rain while touring Asia, but I'd dare not shoot in anything more than that.The 3.0" LCD is nice but doesn't show the full color range as when viewing on a monitor. Live view is good only for showing the composition. It is a bit slow for shooting anything moving. The viewfinder should be the first and only place to go. Also, using only the viewfinder allows you to better brace the camera for less blur. Be sure to use the on-camera highlights feature in review to show parts of the picture that are overexposed.I don't recommend using the pop-up flash unless used with a pop-up diffuser. A dedicated flash unit like the 580ex II is highly recommended. Using pocketwizards or even just the wireless infrared is a good start.This is a very nice starting camera. If and when I decide to buy a new full frame camera, this will be a nice backup camera. I use this with 2 SanDisk Extreme III 8GB CF memory cards. Try not to get too big or too small of a memory card. 10.1MP shows up as 3888x2592. For JPEG, files are about 4-5mbs each. For RAW, files are about 10-20mbs each. The 40D has the option to shoot both RAW+JPEG at the same time, but at a reduced rate since the buffer can't keep up. I shoot almost exclusively in RAW, and the buffer is about 6 shots continuous. In JPEG, the buffer shows 99. High speed burst is a good option to use, and I used it for 3 shot bursts.The manual controls are good. A dedicated wheel to the right of the LCD controls the f-stop and a smaller wheel behind the shutter release controls the shutter speed. ISO, metering, color balance, shot setting, AF, and AE lock are right behind that wheel on the top right corner. The grip on the body feels easy to use and the finish is just right all around.The bundle that is included with the camera is nice: the industry standard neckstrap, DPP, cordless wall charger, and li-ion battery pack. The neck strap is decent, but I wear it backwards as it irritates my neck. Digital Photo Professional is the proprietary software that is included and it is great for after shot changes for white balance and to a small part, exposure compensation at 1/3 stops. The battery charger is small and does not have cords to deal with; the prongs fold down and plug directly into the outlet. The battery pack is li-ion, charges relatively fast, and looks like 2 AA batteries combined.Recommended with:- Canon Speedlite 580ex II- Canon 50mm f/1.8- Canon 50mm f/1.4- Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L- Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS- Canon BG-E2N Battery Grip- Lowepro Slingshot 200- SanDisk Extreme III (2GB, 4GB, 8GB) CF memory cards- SanDisk SanDisk CF Type I/II ImageMateBottom line:Highly Recommended! If you're in the market for a DSLR and are looking at the rebel line (XSi, etc) you might as well get the 40D or other x0D series instead. The difference is +$200~ but you get so much more value.

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.