As previously speculated , Canon announced the new 40D digital SLR on August 20th and let the camera wars begin ! Both Canon and Nikon have timed their model announcements within days of each other in a game of oneup-manship. My good friend and fellow editor, Sacha, has pre-emptively published his Nikon D300 preview several days earlier. He is convinced that the latest Nikon trumps the Canon 40D is in the technical stakes.

Comparisons with the Nikon D300 aside, I do see the 40D as a significant product release from Canon as it brings to market a number of technologies previously only found in the high end 1D series. This demonstrates the rapid advancement of the digital SLR market and brings a whole new level of affordability of previously "pro" capabilities. 

DiG!C III

Starting with the basics, the 40D moves the platform to a 10 megapixel sensor which is about time. I thought it was myopic to release a 30D without a sensor upgrade from the 20D which both shared the same 8 megapixel sensor. Together with the upgraded sensor comes the DiG!C III image processor which was previously only available in the 1D and the 1Ds.  The image processor is the brains of the digital camera, much the same way as the CPU is the brains of a computer. The upgraded image processor allows the 40D to capture 6.5 frames per second and it is able to hold 75 JPEGs or 17 RAWs in memory without writing to the card, allowing for ultra-fast shooting. This is a boon for sports photograpers. The DiG!C III also brings an upgraded 14bit analogue to digital converter which is an improvement over the 30D's 12bit converter. This should help to reduce noise in the image capture process.

The DiG!C III processor is also capable of facial recognition when auto-focusing a scene to give priority to human subjects in the scene. This should reduce those situations when you accidentally lock the auto-focus on the background, rendering the person out of focus. Well, if you were a serious photographer, you shouldn't be making such mistakes that regularly. But again handy for situations when you are shooting fast and when you don't have all the time in the world to compose the scene. I guess, it's a great feature for the paparazzi.

Live View

A trickle down feature that makes it into the 40D is the Live View LCD. This capability is perhaps one of the key features missed by photographers who move up from point and shoot digital cameras to digital SLRs.  Due to the nature of the SLR mechanism, it was never previously possible to enable the scene to be displayed on the LCD screen prior to the shot. This was because of the mirror that sits behind the lens that directs the light into the optical viewfinder. When a shot is taken, the mirror flips up, allowing the light to hit the sensor behind the mirror. The Canon Live View technology is still not comparable to that found in the digital point and shoot cameras as it does not deliver a constantly updated live stream as the compact cameras do. The Live View is really intended to aid the remote operation of the camera by attaching it to a compute and by enabling the scene to be transmitted to the computer screen. Sports Shooter has a good article that explores the real world application of Live View.

3" LCD and Shooting Information Display

The 2.5" LCD screen on the 30D is wonderful and Canon ups the ante with the 40D's 3" LCD. The resolution of both screens is the same but in the case of camera LCDs, more inches is indeed better. More importantly, the 40D incorporates the Shooting Information Display found in the 400D. This allows the entire LCD screen to be used to display key camera settings instead of the smaller dedicate LCD display on the top of the camera. 

Anti-dust Sensor

This is another trickle up feature that the 40D has inherited from its sibling, the 400D.  The EOS Integrated Cleaning System is a much vaunted system to reduce the dust build up on the camera sensor which is the bane of all photographers. The system uses a piezoelectric element attached to the first of the two low pass filters that sit in front of the sensor. This elements vibrants the filter when the camera is turned on and off, thus physically shaking accumulated dust particles off the filter.

Viewfinder

A minor but incredibly useful enhancement in the 40D viewfinder is that it now displays the ISO setting. I've on many occasions forgotten to check my ISO setting and ended taking a whole series of shots using way too high an ISO setting, thus resulting in very noisy photos.

Auto-focus

Canon has improved the sensitivity of the 9 point auto-focus system in the 40D by changing them to cross-type points which will react to both horizontal and vertical elements in the scene.  

The 40D body is priced at US$1,299 and is available now. 

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