Well actually for once I am not in the market (I am sure you can all her the sigh of of relief from my wife). But I know many of you are since it is a question I get all of the time.

The reason I am not in the market is that this year I completely revamped my equipment bags with new bodies, lenses, lights, and other goodies. The main camera's I know shoot with are the Canon EOS 1D III which is likely out of price and feature range for what most of you would ever need. However because I am backup obsessed (you can't screw around with sub-par gear and shoot peoples weddings) I recently replaced my backup camera with a Canon 40D, so now my older camera will sit in the car and be the backup's backup.



The 40D is what inspired me to write this post because it is as far as I am concerned the best value on the market today when looking at a balance of price and quality. The Canon 40D will cover the needs of 95% of the people who ask my advice on a camera purchase and blows away the completion in the serious consumer DSLR category. It has 10 mega pixels (more then most people would ever need) like its little brother the Rebel XTi but blows away the XTi in terms of performance and functionality. Also in my opinion the XTi is just a little to small when it comes to a DSLR.



Even though the 40D might not be the "pro series DSLR" that my 1D is I actually find myself using it more and more for personal shooting. Sometimes I'd rather have the smaller form-factor of the 40D and its kit lenses over the 10 shots a second and lighting fast auto-focus that I get out of the bulky and heavy 1DIII with its "L" lenses.

For a more through review of the 40D checkout photo.net. All of the shots in this post were shot with the 40D and its included 28-135mm kit lenses. The first two are ones I grabbed of my daughter Olivia at Fort Desoto Park and the last one is one that my wife Jennifer grabbed of both of us playing in the water.

Labels: Canon 40D, Gear