back in business - pulled the trigger on Canon 40D

I've been out of the SLR arena for many years. Well, I'm excited and wanted to share with someone. I've been wanting a Canon XTI for probably 2 years, then the 40D came out and I've been stalking it since it's release. I finally pulled the trigger. Swung a pretty sweet deal on it too.

Ritz Camera
Canon 40D $1499
Epson Printer $100
Sub Total $1599

Paypal 10% off $160 (Ritzcamera/paypal promo)
Fatcashback 4% $57
Epson rebate $75
Ritz/Epson reba $25
Free shipping $0

Total to my door $1282.40


I'm really stoked to be able to take some decent photos again. It's so frustrating using consumer point-and-shoots. missing your favorite shot because of shutter lag or finding that the flash completely bleached the photo.

I hear the lens is good, but not top notch. It's a 28-135mm f3.5-5.6 with Image Stabilizing. However, more than sufficient to get me rolling.

Nice, I have heard good things about the 40D

"Paypal 10% off $160 (Ritzcamera/paypal promo)
Fatcashback 4% $57"

Now that is a really good promo with a free printer!

The rest of the accessories are gonna be the killer from here out. See the 50mm thread in this forum for a great cheap lens, or at least so the photos suggest. I just bought one for my Nikon, mostly for low light situations. An external strobe is a must have for the camera. I find I use a strobe(s) more and more, even outdoors in the daylight.

I think I'm going to hold off for a few months before I begin looking at accessories.

Anyone got advice on a CF card?

Lexar and Sandisk are 2 great companies for cf cards or any memory cards in general. just look at their website and see which one fits your needs. they have cf cards up to 16GB which will hold tons of storage.

look at the Sandisk Extreme III. its fast and they offer up to 16GB
the Extreme IV is a little faster but the largest size is 8GB

I have the Sandisk Extreme III in the 16 gig variety. Be very careful if you buy them from ebay. Almost 3/4 of them are fakes out of china or the likes and look almost identical.

Lexar or Sandisk are top brands. I had an issue with one of my Lexar cards and they sent me a new one and recovered my photos, no charge.

I love how people invest so much money on bodies and glass and then go to ebay for a friggin memory card.

The memory card is one of the single most important pieces of gear you will buy. Of course, the only times when you find out stuff like this is after you've lost pictures.

My point? Don't buy your memory cards from a place where you wouldn't feel safe buying your 40D. That includes Ebay as well as every other place that sells them online for dirt cheap.

I'm personally a fan of Sandisk cards and have never had a problem with them. I have several 4 gig cards, some in Extreme III, and a few in Ultra II. I don't really notice any difference at all between them. From what I've been told, the camera's buffer is the bottleneck if you're using anything faster than an Ultra II card. The only difference you're gonna really see is when you're transferring them onto your computer. So it really all just depends on how much you wanna spend, and if saving 20 bucks is worth not having to wait an extra 30 seconds for your pics to transfer to your computer.

8 gig Ultra II card is $120 at B&H.
8 gig Extreme III is $150.
8 gig Exteme IV is $180.

Costco online is having a special on the 8Gb Extreme III CF card $127.99. It goes back to $143 after Dec 23.

I'd get a Sandisk Extreme IV for the 40D, I'm seeing a big write speed difference in flushing the buffer between the II's and III's on my 1D3. It didn't seem to matter with other Canon bodies but it appears the digic 3 processor in the newer Canons benefits from faster cards. Having ended up with a phoney Sandisk card off Ebay I'll echo what Peter and ScottA have mentioned above.

Whoa...totally forgot about the digic III. But remember that your 1D3 has dual chips and a much larger buffer compared to the 40D's single proc that shoots 6.5fps for 17 raw frames, so there who knows what the exact difference between the two cards will be. There's still probably a little difference, so pretend that I didn't say some of the stuff in my last post!

Has anyone used/seen the Ducati Extreme Edition

You would think with the larger buffer in the mkIII the card write speed wouldn't matter but it really does, I have no problem getting the full 30 frame burst (in RAW) out of it and then it's seems to take forever to flush the captured frames to the card, I find myself just staring in the VF slowly watching the available frames refill. My 12gig extreme III is giving me between 600 and 700 RAW frames depending on ISO and scene complexity which is really way more then I normally need so I'm thinking about an 8 gig extreme IV to help clean the buffer out more quickly. My 4 gig Ultra II cards are worthless (rhetorically speaking) for this body other then as backups, too small and perceptibly slower.

I'll take those 4 gig cards off your hands if you're not gonna use 'em!

Was just looking at the Ducati Extreme Edition. They appear to have a 45mb/sec sequential read/write speed.

Ducati Extreme: 45mb/sec
Extreme IV: 40mb/sec
Extreme III: 20mb/sec
Ultra II: 10mb/sec

I'm wondering how fast the 40D can write. no sense in getting a card that's faster than the camera.