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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

40D - I Love this camera (1 Viewer)

C

Clarke Robinson

Well-known member
Hi again Everyone

Ok, I couldn't help share my happiness with the new camera (had it for just over 3 weeks now). I'm beginning to notice that it produces much finer detail over greater distances than the 350D ever could. So I'm able to get away with much more cropping and still get quality I'm happy with, at least for the web, if not A3 prints ;)

Also, to my surprise, and after several years trying, it seems the 40D is attracting woodpeckers. Having craved anything other than a blurry dot on my screen for longer than I care to remember, today there was both a great spotted and a green woodpecker wanting to pose. Ok, they were still too far away for my liking, but at last I managed to get shots where I could recognise the bird in question. And at ISO800 too...not even a consideration with the 350.

Here's 2 examples. They're far from perfect, but still acceptable under the conditions and constantly moving subjects. Well chuffed with this new toy! Oh, and am getting 1500+ shots on a single charge too, and the battery's still not empty.
 

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Hi Clarke,

yep, good, innit?

;)

No problems with 1600 ISO either: this has been lightly NR'd (just to smooth the BG) but 1600 hasn't hurt the detail one little bit - I like that!
 

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i too love my 40d. its a lot of camera for a small price!!!! (wonder what goodies the 50d is gonna have in its magnesium alloy shell)
 
Keith Reeder said:
Hi Clarke,

yep, good, innit?

;)

No problems with 1600 ISO either: this has been lightly NR'd (just to smooth the BG) but 1600 hasn't hurt the detail one little bit - I like that!
Click to expand...

WOW! That (swan and woodpeckers) is amazing! I'm promising myself a 40D, with 100-400L IS USM, early in the new year, and am already drooling at the prospect!

Dave
 
How does this grab you for 3200 then, Dave?

Again, a light dusting of Neat Image, but very usable.

Just a pity there's no bird in there...
 

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Well in the interests of full disclosure, it can be seen from the Exif that I wasn't really light-challenged when I took this, but there are proper shadow areas in this picture, and the noise in them (which I made quite a bit worse by lifting things up in Levels) has cleaned up brilliantly.

I'm very impressed by this degree of sharpness and detail: all the edges are sharp and well-defined, with none of that "fuzziness" and colour bleed that you get from some cameras, especially when aggressive in-camera NR is applied.

By all accounts, the 40D's in-camera NR is just as good as this (at the expense of buffer depth, for some bizarre reason) - but I like Neat Image. I'm even starting to like the Neat Image sharpening algorithm, which seems to work in a way which is very in synch with the NR algorithm.
 
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Excellent images guys,

This camera does seem to have a lot going for it, especially as it looks like Canon has further reduced the cost of the Mk III. £700 against £3000, I think you have a bargain.

But, the D300 is just about to appear, should be an interesting couple of months.
 
Oh, mine are not "proper" pics, just me playing with the settings - but I feel very comfortable now about the prospect of kicking ISO upstairs when needed.

I'm particularly pleased by the colours at 3200 - they're pretty close to the real colours, with no high ISO colour shift to worry about (so far).
 
Neat Image is a fabulous little noise reduction utility. It comes in 2 forms, a stand-alone app, and a photoshop plugin (i use the plugin).

I used it actually on both woodpecker images above to reduce the noise. I use it on nearly every picture I take.
 
Keith Reeder said:
Full RAW, Paul - my flirtation with sRAW ended a bit back, when I found out that the Adobe DNG converter can't read 'em.
Click to expand...

Thanks Keith, I wondered because there is a thread on Naturescapes where its said that sRAW files are much better for noise handling than RAW files. At least thats how I read it. Something to do with 4 adjacent pixels effectively becoming one for sRAW. I might have a play at the weekend. I'll be shooting ISO6400 images again for web use so the smoother the better if the theory works!
 
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Probably true about sRAW, Paul - I've seen suggestions about it being implemented by pixel binning, which could make for apparently cleaner images.

Dunno if you need to worry with your toy though - I've seen 6400 from the Mk III, dammit!

Mind you, I've played with "pretend" 6400 from the 40D (shooting at ISO 3200/-1 EV, then pushing +1 EV at the conversion stage) which have been better than I'd expected, so I might have a go with sRAW for that and see what happens...

This is fun!

;)
 
I've gotta agree with the others it is a rather nice camera... due to poor light I spent much of yesterday shooting at ISO800, I've only just started going through the shots but I'm already impressed with the results in terms of noise. Here's one taken wide open at f5.6, 1/250th, 700mm... slight crop and then resized and USM, but no NR, I'm happy enough with that. It's certainly a step up from how the 400D handles ISO800.
 

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