Semi-Tough: Canon EOS 40D

Of the high-end “prosumer” that hit the market during 2007-2008, the Canon EOS 40D had the most aggressive pricing…by a whole dollar.

When it was released in late August of '07, Canon had yet to slice the DSLR market as finely as they did in later years. There were the 1D and 5D professional cameras, but lower on the totem pole there was only the plastic-bodied entry-level EOS Rebel XTi, and the 40D, successor to the earlier 30D.

This meant that the $1,299 Canon EOS 40D had to cater to every buyer from well-heeled novices who were too cool for a Rebel to advanced amateurs and professionals who couldn't justify the $3,000+ tariff demanded for the full-frame 5D.

This made for a mode dial that was a little... crowded.

You had your "Green Rectangle" setting, which turned the camera into a fully-automated giant point-'n'-shoot. For the advanced amateur or pro, there was your regular array of "PASM" modes (as well as "A-DEP", which adjusted the aperture to ensure that all subjects covered by the active focusing points were inside the depth of field), and the user-programmable C1-through-C3 custom settings. Finally, for beginners there was the selection of Sports, Portrait, Landscape, et cetera modes. All in all, this sums up to fifteen possible settings on the mode dial. Yikes!

The LCD panel on top gave you pretty much all the setting info you needed to drive the camera and could be backlit orange for easy reading in dim lighting.

The 40D was a pretty iterative update of the earlier 30D. On the back, the LCD was now a larger 3" screen, up from its predecessor's 2.5" unit, necessitating the relocation of of the buttons from a vertical column to the left of the screen to a horizontal row under it.

Under the hood, the APS-C sized CMOS sensor went from 8.2 to 10.1 megapixels and the 40D got Canon's new DIGIC III image processor, the second camera after the 1D to do so.

Despite being well-received and earning the "Highly Recommended" rating from DPReview, the 40D was one of the shortest-lived prosumer Canons, getting replaced after only a year by the 15MP EOS 50D.

Nowadays you can pick up used 40D bodies for a c-note or less, but they still work great.