Wonderfully refined upgrade from the perspective of a 30D user

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As a long-time 30D user with 5 Canon lenses, I bought my Canon EOS 40D to accompany my existing 30D in dusty African safari locations where it becomes rather difficult to change lenses in areas with blowing dust and to accommodate the need to quickly switch between wider-angle shots and telephoto zoom lens shots. Not to repeat all of the previous accolades from other users and product reviews out on the Web, I will just say that nearly every aspect of the 30D has been improved in the 40D. The various ease-of-access layouts of buttons, options, and menus is much improved over the 30D, as is the ability to customize the various camera settings more to the way each user may want to use their camera, along with nice little touches like displaying the ISO in the viewfinder (yes!). Taking shots also feels nicer because the Canon EOS Canon EOS 40D has a noticeably quieter mechanism. And with the Internet-retailer price of the 40D at the time of this writing being more than $700 cheaper than the Nikon D300, this is a camera packed with value.

The one minor quibble that I do have with the Canon EOS 40D’s ergonomics is that I really would have preferred the row of buttons on the back to go along the left side, the way they were positioned on the 30D, instead of being lined up along the bottom back edge of the camera. Every so often when I have the camera slung from the strap, the (Playback) or (Info) button gets accidentally pushed and I look down to see the LCD screen displaying an image or the Info information. I never had the buttons bumped when they were aligned on the left edge on the 30D.

My favorite add-on accessory for my Canon EOS 40D is Canon’s Canon EF-D Focusing Screen for Canon EOS 40D Digital SLR Camera While there are third-party focusing screens for the EOS 30D, I really love this gridded focusing screen, and its usefulness has grown on me as I have used it over time.

One additional note… While I have purchased various electronics from Amazon before (including camera lenses), I chose to purchase my 40D from, ahem, another Internet site. It seems that Amazon has gotten more and more sloppy and careless with how they package goods in the past one or two years, with the bubble wrap and air pillows not sufficiently being filled to hold products firmly inside their external shipping boxes. While having books sliding loosely in the cardboard shipping container is not an issue, I have received numerous CDs from Amazon where the CD case was heavily damaged, and I did not want to risk having such an investment like this camera being thumped and tumbled around in the process of shipping.

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