Canon EOS 40D with 17-85mm IS lens review

The EOS 40D succeeds the 30D as Canon's digital SLR for the discerning photography enthusiast.

£930 may be a lot to spend on a camera, but don't be misled by the unexceptional 10.1-megapixel resolution; there's plenty here to persuade you to part with your cash.

We tested it with the 17-85mm kit lens, but it's also available without a lens for £735. This kit lens isn't cheap, then, but it's worth the extra money. It has a 5x zoom range and optical image stabilisation, which proved effective at capturing blur-free shots at slow shutter speeds. The only downside is that, unlike CCD-based stabilisation used by other manufacturers, this one disappears if you switch to another lens.

At 740g, the EOS 40D is around 50 per cent bulkier and heavier than an entry-level digital SLR, and its magnesium alloy body certainly inspires confidence. We can't fault the layout and number of physical controls, which make light work of adjusting photographic settings. There's plenty of visual feedback, too, with a backlit passive LCD screen on top of the camera, a big optical viewfinder and a 3in 230,000-pixel LCD screen. The latter is great for reviewing shots and can also be switched to display a live preview, a rare trick for a digital SLR.

The through-the-lens (TTL) optical viewfinder is usually preferable to the low-resolution digital preview, but live view is welcome when shooting at awkward angles, for previewing white balance presets and for fine-tuning manual focus, too. Dedicated zoom buttons enable quick digital zooming of the live view image to 5x or 10x, which we found made manual focus even easier than with the optical viewfinder. Live view takes its toll on battery life, giving a disappointing 231 shots in our test, but shooting using the optical viewfinder and just the passive LCD screen led to 1,611 shots.

The most significant difference between the 40D and the 400D is performance. Continuous shooting is at 6.5fps for a maximum of 75 shots (or 17 shots in Raw mode). If you don't want to use up all your shots in 12 seconds flat, a less frenetic 2.4fps mode is also available. Autofocusing is fast, even in low light, with nine points measuring focus in both horizontal and vertical axes.

Because this is one of the most expensive cameras ever to grace the pages of Shopper, we expected great things from its images, and we weren't disappointed. Colours displayed a subtlety and accuracy that made other cameras seem clumsy and synthetic. Pictures weren't particularly sharp on standard settings, but it was easy to adjust the sharpness and various other settings using the custom Picture Style presets. However, we found it necessary to keep a close eye on the autofocus to avoid the occasional focusing error. Noise was the lowest we've seen from a digital camera, being largely insignificant at ISO 1600.

The EOS 40D is a serious investment, costing significantly more than other manufacturers' second-from-entry-level digital SLRs. Pentax's K10D (reviewed in What's New, Shopper November 2007) costs around £500 with a basic kit lens, while Nikon's D80 is available with an 18-135mm lens for £679. However, a D80 with a stabilised 24-120mm lens costs around £940, which makes the 40D and its kit lens seem more competitive. The 40D's 3in live-view screen and 6.5fps continuous mode positions it closer to Nikon's recently announced D300, which costs around £1,200 without a lens.

Without a direct competitor, the EOS 40D must be assessed on its own terms. Image quality is the best we've seen, although improvements over the 400D are ultimately subtle. However, for build quality, accessible controls and advanced options, the differences are more significant. For us, the excellent live preview implementation is the highlight and would be enough to convince us to splash out on the 40D over Nikon's D80.

Author: Ben Pitt