Canon EOS 40D
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Written by Gordon Laing
Canon EOS 40D Gallery
The following images were taken with a final production Canon EOS 40D using a Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0L lens. The EOS 40D was set to Large Fine JPEG quality, Auto White Balance, Evaluative metering and the Standard Picture Style; High ISO Noise Reduction and Highlight Priority were set to their default OFF and Disable settings respectively.
The individual exposure mode, file sizes, shutter speeds, aperture, ISO and lens focal length are listed for each image; none required exposure compensation.
The crops are taken from the original files, reproduced at 100% and saved in Adobe Photoshop CS2 as JPEGs with the default Very High quality preset, while the resized images were made in Photoshop CS2 and saved with the default High quality preset. The three crops are typically taken from far left, central and far right portions of each image.
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Landscape: 3.31MB, Program, 1/200, f10, ISO 100, 24-105mm at 24mm (equivalent to 38mm)
 | This first shot was taken with EOS 40D set to its lowest 100 ISO sensitivity in Program mode. The bright boat deck hasn’t fooled the 40D’s evaluative metering. The crops reveal Canon’s trademark silky-smooth performance at low ISOs and there’s tons of detail. There’s also some latitude for sharpening here, either by adjusting the Picture Style or processing a RAW file instead – or better still, both. | |||||
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Landscape: 6.61MB, Program, 1/250, f11, ISO 200, 24-105mm at 24mm (equivalent to 38mm)
 | Switching the sensitivity up a notch to 200 ISO unsurprisingly hasn’t affected the detail here and noise levels remain virtually invisible as you’d hope. We used Live View on this shot to more comfortably shoot handheld at a very low angle. Throughout our tests we were also impressed with the 40D’s evaluative metering system and never once felt the need to apply exposure compensation. This is particularly notable for the indoor shots below. | |||||
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Portrait: 3.32MB, Aperture Priority, 1/2000, f4, ISO 200, 24-105mm at 105mm (equivalent to 168mm)
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This portrait shot was taken with the 40D at 200 ISO and the 24-105mm zoomed-in with its aperture wide open. Once again an image packed with detail and bereft of noise. Although you’d hope so at 200 ISO with a decent lens under bright conditions.  The 40D’s smooth processing using default settings is again apparent here and some may prefer to apply a little extra sharpening. The default settings do produce very film-like natural-looking images though. | ||
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Building: 4.34MB, Program, 1/250, f11, ISO 200, 24-105mm at 24mm (equivalent to 38mm)
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This building shot was taken with the 40D again set to 200 ISO, and like the previous images, there’s no noise or other artefacts to worry about. Again, it’s a very smooth result using the 40D’s default Picture Style and Large Fine JPEG mode.  If you prefer something a little sharper, an extra notch on the 40D’s scale can be easily accommodated without undesirable artefacts. The RAW files can look even better still, even with default processing in Canon’s DPP. | ||
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Indoor: 3.90MB, Program, 1/40, f4.5, ISO 400, 24-105mm at 24mm (equivalent to 38mm)
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Our first indoor shot was taken with the 40D set to 400 ISO, and for the first time in this Gallery, there’s a little noise visible. The crops reveal the noise to be very fine though, and there’s still plenty of detail here.  As usual for Canon bodies, the auto white balance under tungsten lighting isn’t great, but we’ve seen worse. | |||||
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Macro: 3.65MB, Aperture Priority, 1/15, f5, ISO 800, 24-105mm at 73mm (equivalent to 117mm)
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Our first macro shot was taken with the 40D’s sensitivity increased to 800 ISO, and the crops reveal greater noise in areas of flat colour or shadow. That said, like the previous example, it’s not that bad, and in fact barely noticeable on normal print sizes.  As you’ll see on the next 800 ISO sample, this sensitivity is still capable of recording great detail and is very usable. | ||
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Indoor: 3.94MB, Program, 1/13, f4, ISO 800, 24-105mm at 24mm (equivalent to 38mm)
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Our second indoor shot was taken with the 40D’s sensitivity at 800 ISO, and while flat areas and shadows do reveal noise like the previous example, the crops we’ve chosen here certainly show a lot of detail.
 The beer pump labels in particular contain some very fine detail, proving 800 ISO on the 40D is very usable both for prints and pixel-peepers alike. | |||||
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Macro: 5.26MB, Aperture Priority, 1/6, f18, ISO 1600, 24-105mm at 105mm (equivalent to 168mm)
 | Our second macro shot was taken using the 40D mounted on a tripod. We used Live View and the 10x magnifier mode to manually focus the shot, and this feature is ideal under these circumstances. As a tripod-based shot we could have used a lower ISO but wanted to demonstrate the 40D’s performance at 1600 ISO here. The crops reveal an increase in noise – particularly chroma noise – but again there’s still a lot of detail there. | |||||
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Indoor: 5.25MB, Program, 1/60, f5.6, ISO 3200, 24-105mm at 24mm (equivalent to 38mm)
 | Normally we’d stop our Gallery shots at 1600 ISO, but wanted to show you an example of the 40D at its highest 3200 ISO setting. The crops reveal a further increase in noise – again particularly chroma noise – but we’d say the result is still very respectable and quite usable. Note all these images were taken with the 40D’s High ISO NR set to the default Off, but to compare images with it On, check out our Real Life Noise page. | |||||
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