(Quote) 6) Use Photoshop and auto level the resulting image. It will CLEARLY/DRAMATICALLY show you where all the crud is. And even if you live under the delusion that the ultrasonic system works, try this for yourself to see what your so called clean sensor looks like.(End quote)

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Hi George

I agree with you that cleaning a sensor is not rocket science. I use eclipse fluid and digi pads on my 30D.

As far as the 40D is concerned, I test for the smut markes using equalise in my Photoshop Elements 2. It shows up the smut just as well as auto level. I can assure you that after 2500 shots, apart from the three sticky smut marks I have collected, the rest of the sensor is remarkably clean.

I do expect to clean my sensor at some stage but not not too soon.

Martin

Hi

I went to a shop last Friday with the intention of just buying a CF card but when I saw they had the 40D on sale with the stock arriving earlier that very day, I went against my own advice abnout waiting 6 months before any potential bugs are ironed out and purchased a 40D there and then.

I used it at the Shoreham airshow last weekend under mostly bright or sunny conditions so I can only give my first impressions. I will need another couple of weeks before I can confirm my opening impressions to myself. I need to get use to the camera a bit more and use it under other lighting conditions. Nevertheless, I certainly hope the last few remaining air shows will be sunny as well.

My impressions:

Better recording of detail.

Better colour reproduction and graduation across the image

Very good at focusing on dark images e/g dark aircraft against dark blue sky (where sun is in front of crowd line)

As far as autofocusing is in genearal. The higher sensitivity for autofocusing only works as cross type on the outer focus points at apetures of F5.6 or larger so do not expect a huge improvement if your lens apeture is not any bigger.

I prefer to stick with my Cannon IS100-400 lens even though the focus points may not work as cross type on this lens. All that I can say at the moment is that autofocusing is not worse using the 100-400 lens. I will need a couple of more air shows to decide if I have more hits with the autofocus. I do have a Sigma F2.8 120-300 but rarely use it but I might try it out with this Camera.

All the telephoto lens (not the wide angle ones) pics in my Shoreham air show thread have been taken with my 40D but as they are only small web size images you cannot judge the camera from looking at them.

I checked my high res RAW images in DPP by moving the sharpening slider right up to 10 to see how they looked.

The settings I used were standard and ranged betweenn ISO100 to ISO250 in shutter prority at 320th a sec to 1000th a sec except for a few landings where lower shutter speeds were used.

I have not done any high res A4 size sample prints yet. That is what mtters most to me but I am quite confident.

At the moment I am happy with the camera. No electronic bugs……..yet!

Hope this helps.

Lovely photos.

The 5th one is my favourite.

Very nice

Martin

[QUOTE=REF;1158194]I know they are later than some but I hope you all like them anyway.

Especially the first one!

Martin

Brilliant pics and a great web site.

Thanks for posting

Martin