Canon 40D is not the right camera for me

Ever since the 40D hit the market I was hoping my 300D would die in order to justify buying a new camera. Today, I was babysitting my new little cousin so I decided to take pictures hoping to give a nice photo to my aunt and uncle. I grabbed the 50mm 1.8 lens, and attached my flash unit to the camera body.

Before taking pictures with the digital camera, I grabbed my Canon A-1 and I manually punched in all the settings I needed. After having difficulty trying to manual focus a kid crawling across the room at the speed of light, I decided it was time to use the 300D. The ISO setting on the 300D were adjusted to my liking. The Auto focus feature with the help of the 580EX worked great as usual. Taking photos of a kid moving across the room was no longer a problem.

A few hours later, I populated the photos on my PC and I noticed the settings were blurry. The meta data revealed I left the camera in AV mode As most of you know, the Speedlite flashes do not work too well in AV mode. This error permitted the camera to take very photos with very slow shutter speeds.

In conclusion, I guess my next purchase will not be a 40D; instead it'll be note cards to create a checklist. Hopefully, the checklist will help me avoid future mistakes. On the bright side, I was able to get one decent digital image.



If Canon introduces a voice integrated checklist in their next line of cameras next year, I'll probably buy one right away.

Do you have a great memory or do you too review a check list before snapping photos?

--
http://www.axephotography.com

Really sweet photo! Glad you were able to get at least this one.

I will bet you remember to check (w/o help of checklist) for AV next time you use the flash! Once I have a mistake like this happen to me , I usually remember the next time. The only problem is there are a lot of mistakes to make and I will make them all at least once.

I did the same thing today, but reversed. I forgot i was in manual shutter mode and overexposed a shot outside. It works both ways, and I've done it both ways and screwed up other ways too. The more shots I miss that way, the more I check before I take the next shots.

Av is for fill flash.

I suggest that you put your camera in Manual mode and leave the flash in ETTL for indoor shots.

Set an aperture for the DOF you want and a shutter speed between 1/60-1/250th depending on the situation. Slower shutter speeds allow more ambient light in. Set + 1/3 to 2/3 flash exposure compensation. I like shooting at 400 ISO with my indoor flash shots. This allows for faster flash recycling. I also have custom function 14 set to 1 for average. Keep an eye on the histogram to get a good guage of the exposure. Shoot Av for fill outdoors. I also like using a diffuser or bouncing off the ceiling. I like using A Better Bounce Card Feather-Light. I shoot RAW which gives me some margin for error.
--
Juli
http://www.pbase.com/julivalley/galleries
Canon FiveDee, Canon 4oD, Canon Gee3, Canon S7o, Fuji Eff30, Sony Hnine.

Mistakes always happen. You can just try to minimize them. I personally like the look of AV flash because it brings in the ambient light. You'll have to check the shutter speed and boost the iso to get a nice effect.

Thanks Juli, these are good points to keep in mind, so Im responding so that it will be in "My Threads" I just bought a Canon 40D, my first Canon dSLR so it will take a bit of adjustment to learn how best to use it.
--
---Terry http://photostuff.org/galapagos.html

Kinda like notecards, set up for your fav types of shooting and away ya go

CrazyJ said:

Do you have a great memory or do you too review a check list before
snapping photos?

Click to expand...

I normally avoid having these problems by peeking at my shots after I shoot. Normally, I check ISO speed before shooting, and I watch shutter/aperture in the viewfinder. Av mode, as Juli notes is for fill-in flash. If your balance between flash illumination and natural light needs to favor the flash to keep a faster shutter speed, then Manual Mode will enable you to keep your aperture where you want it. Otherwise, shoot in Tv or boost the ISO speed to raise your shutter speed.

After over 4.5 years of shooting with my EOS 10D, I can tell if the settings were wrong just by listening to the shutter and looking at the aperture and ISO. I've ruined plenty of shots with too high ISO, and a couple of shots due to shutter or focus issues.

One thing I do when I turn on the camera is make sure that the lens is set to AF... If I leave it on MF and it looks ok at the beginning of shootings something, I can end up with lots of OOF shots.

-Mike



http://demosaic.blogspot.com

CrazyJ said:

Ever since the 40D hit the market I was hoping my 300D would die in
order to justify buying a new camera. Today, I was babysitting my
new little cousin so I decided to take pictures hoping to give a nice
photo to my aunt and uncle. I grabbed the 50mm 1.8 lens, and
attached my flash unit to the camera body.

Click to expand...

The center focus point on the 40D is not only 3x as sensitive as that of the 300D, it also has that precision in both X and Y axis (as opposed to the 20D/30D/400D single axis 3x precision). With the 50/1.8 and the 40D, you can leave the flash at home. In short, you can shoot Av mode at f1.8 ISO1600 and not worry about writing note cards. This is a significant improvement for low light work.

--
-CW

Hi,

the flash works perfectly in Av - as a fill flash. You wanted the flash to be your primary light source which means you should have used M, P or full automatic mode.

I suggest you research a bit how the Canon flash system works before you blame the technology. You can set any camera to the wrong mode and will get suboptimal results but this isn't the fault of the camera!

here's an article which may be a good starting point:
http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash/

Best regards,
Sharif

--
Sharif El-Hamalawi
http://www.el-hamalawi.net
http://www.pbase.com/sharif

I think the opposite, you NEED a 40D, it is a lot more advanced, and would have not had such a low shutter speed in the first place, and use auto ISO, so actually your theory is completely wrong, and as someone else added with the lens you had on with a high ISO you would have not needed a flash in the first place

300D is a great camera, but was the first and can be very limiting in certain situations, yours was one

Sharif said:

Hi,

here's an article which may be a good starting point:
http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash/

Best regards,
Sharif

--
Sharif El-Hamalawi
http://www.el-hamalawi.net
http://www.pbase.com/sharif

Click to expand...

--
Best Regards,

StarJack

If are shooting indoors, where light levels are typically EV 4 and EV 5, why on earth would you need to shoot in AV mode?

AV only makes sense with fill flash. Indoors, we are not usually shooting fill, as most of the light reaching the sensor is flash, unless you are shooting high ISO wide aperture, etc., and if you were doing that, you would probably not want flash in the first place.

Indoors, I just put it in manual, since it won't matter much what the shutter speed is, unless, the shutter speed really drags (which it might do in AV, which the wrong setting for indoors). I would shoot it manual, ISO 400, f/5.6 (or so) and 1/125 second (or 1/60 or whatever, just as long as the shutter speed doesn't "drag").

Patrick

av mode and flash is ok if you the intension is to get motion into the picture. The flash will freeze the action at one point and make some of the image sharper.

It is not suitable for all types of pictures though. If you do not want any blurring in the picture the best way is to use M mode. Because then you have full control over aperture and shutter speed.

By programming in your favorite settings for given situations, it's possible that the 40D would have prevented this problem.

You could have just dialed up "C1" or "C2" or "C3" that you'd previously set up for "crawling baby mode" and fired away without needing to think of every detail right then.

Of course, you have to set it up first, but...

It's kind of like having three reprogrammable note cards built in only better because it sets everything up for you.

You can play with all of the settings at your leisure while testing. Then, when you get it all just the way you want, you simply tell the camera to "register" all of the current settings into one of the three memories. Next time you're in the same shooting situation, all you need to do is switch to that custom mode

--
Jim H.

I hat to admit it... but one of the biggest mistakes I've made with my DSLR (which was the 300D till last weekend) was to shoot 90% of my daughters 1st birthday without a memory card in the camera. The 300D doesn't have a way of preventing the camera from shooting without the CF card (at least not with Canon firmware, possibly hacked firmware might have that feature/option??). Well, one of the first things I did to my 40D is set it to NOT take photos without a memory card.

Aside from that... The 40D has ISO in the viewfinder... if I look down in the view finder I now know what ISO setting it's at. When chasing down cute photos of my 3.5 year old daughter (who won't hardly ever pose for me) I also regularly bumped into the 300D's rather small (4 frames) RAW buffer and it would then take several seconds to clear that buffer of even one frame and MANY seconds to clear the whole buffer.

So for me... the 40D does provide a few features that made me more then happy to put the 300D into a emergency backup role for all my future DSLR needs.

CrazyJ said:

Ever since the 40D hit the market I was hoping my 300D would die in
order to justify buying a new camera. Today, I was babysitting my
new little cousin so I decided to take pictures hoping to give a nice
photo to my aunt and uncle. I grabbed the 50mm 1.8 lens, and
attached my flash unit to the camera body.

Before taking pictures with the digital camera, I grabbed my Canon
A-1 and I manually punched in all the settings I needed. After
having difficulty trying to manual focus a kid crawling across the
room at the speed of light, I decided it was time to use the 300D.
The ISO setting on the 300D were adjusted to my liking. The Auto
focus feature with the help of the 580EX worked great as usual.
Taking photos of a kid moving across the room was no longer a problem.

A few hours later, I populated the photos on my PC and I noticed the
settings were blurry. The meta data revealed I left the camera in AV
mode As most of you know, the Speedlite flashes do not work too
well in AV mode. This error permitted the camera to take very photos
with very slow shutter speeds.

In conclusion, I guess my next purchase will not be a 40D; instead
it'll be note cards to create a checklist. Hopefully, the checklist
will help me avoid future mistakes. On the bright side, I was able to
get one decent digital image.

Click to expand...

(photo of baby crawling)

CrazyJ said:

If Canon introduces a voice integrated checklist in their next line
of cameras next year, I'll probably buy one right away.

Do you have a great memory or do you too review a check list before
snapping photos?

--
http://www.axephotography.com

Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll have to read up on this feature but sounds like a very cool one for sure.

--
http://www.axephotography.com

The link you provided is very imformative. Thank you.
--
http://www.axephotography.com

everyone using a Canon SLR and Flash should have a read of this paper.

Not everything about the system is intuitive but as soon as you understand a few basic principles how the flash is operated in the EOS system you should be able to use it very consistently!

Cheers,
Sharif

--
Sharif El-Hamalawi
http://www.el-hamalawi.net
http://www.pbase.com/sharif