Canon EOS 40D DSLR with 17-85mm lens

This was purchased as a gift for our son. As far as he is concerned it is all the reviewer promised. The pictures he and his wife have taken are vivid and gorgeous. They do lots of bird photography and candid people shots. The rapid shutter speeds on burst allow for some great captures and the lighting and focus are exceptional.

The body has no problem, but the lens showed a very bad one: it has a case of focus-hunting on the entire zoom range of 17-85mm. They should've disclosed this information on the listing, but remained not to share it. It will cost too much money to have it repaired I only use it in manual focus.

I received the shipment within 10 days. It is really good for this. I purchased the Cannon EOS 40d camera on Feb 1st, 2009. Received around Feb 10th. I did not test it extensively when I received it. On Feb 27, 2009, when my friends and I wanted to take pictures, it continuously show ERR 99. We checked the battery, lens etc, but no luck. It will show ERR 99 after 5 to 6 shots after reset by unload/reload the battery. We sent an email to them asking if I can exchange one but no response yet. I have contacted with Cannon, hopefully the Canon staff will fix it for me.

The 40d is nearly as good as the newer 50d, but when I got mine the sensor cleaner malfunctioned within a week. I ended up returning it for a full refund after using it for several shoots, and got a 50d instead. Pictures in low light are slightly better with the 50d, and that was my biggest need. Everything else really seemed the same.

I still have my 40D but I use the 10-22mm lens and it is still a great landscape camera and lens combo. I got rid of all my Canon gear except for it when I switched to Nikon, I just could not part with it.

I love this camera. I've been dedicated to Canon and they've never let me down. This is no exception. I do with that it had better low-light functionality and maybe even went to 6400 (3200 is alright though) but for the price point you can't go wrong. My biggest critique - the 50D came out a week after I purchased this camera.

I have had this camera for about 2 months now. I bought it to be able to take lower light level shots with less graininess than my previous Canon G3. I also wanted better optics and resolution. I was a bit disappointed with the low level light performance. It is certainly less grainy but the shutter speed is to slow for most of my purposes. However, I may have been expecting too much. The larger sensor certainly gives better overall noise performance.The optics gives me better depth of field which is one of the things I was after. The zoom give me enough close up for most of my shots but sometimes I use a 75-300mm telephoto that I bought separately when I run out of gas. For wide angle shots the 17-85mm is handy although it distorts a bit at the low end. I think (and I'm no expert) this is a function of the physics involved with such a wide angle (fish eye effect).The flash is a big step up from the G3. This camera doesn't "wash out" the color by over exposing. Almost none of my shots suffer from this which was a problem with the old G3.I use the high compression and have typical file sizes of 1.5 to 2 meg. When blowing up you really don't notice the difference between the less compressed higher quality images. I only use the higher quality mode for shots I know I want the most out of.Bottom line I really like this camera and would highly recommend it. I use a 4 gig sandisk extreme III memory card.I would like to say I wish the DSLR community would stop being snobby and push a video mode. There is no excuse now that they have the live view feature. I can't tell you how many times I was shooting stills and my kids did something that needed to be videoed then and there because running to grab the real video would mean loosing the moment altogether. So hopefully there will eventually be that feature. It is the only thing really missing from this camera that would prompt me to buy another. Well that and unbelievable low light level performance.

I have had this camera and lens for 9 months. Beautiful photos. Love the "live view" for setting up to take photos with a tripod. Large sensor means excellent low-light capability. Fast start-up time. Extremely fast focusing. Love the ability to take 6 photos per second! Manual controls are wonderful and easy to use. Beautiful display. The EFS 17-85 lens is great (remember to multiply by 1.6 for comparable 35mm focal lengths). Am also using a SanDisk Extreme III CF card. This is a fast card.