Canon 40D & Nikon D300: A Few Side-by-Side Comments

GTaudiophile

Lifer
Oct 24, 2000
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I was at Penn Camera in DC last week renting a lens and decided to do a quick side-by-side comparison of the 40D and D300. I am unfamiliar with the buttons/menu structure of the Nikon, so I did not shoot with it. My observations were purely physical.

Comparing the viewfinders of the two cameras is like night and day. The Nikon's viewfinder is simply brilliant, possibly even better than the Canon 5D's. It was just so clear and bright that colors and details of the objects in the store seemingly came to life. The viewfinder of the 40D, for all intents and purposes, is the same as the one I have on my 20D. It works but nothing to write home about in terms of improvement.

Now for my smallish hands, the Canon's grip and size actually felt better to me. I found nothing spectacular about the D300's grip. The D300 is a slightly larger and heavier camera, a little less portable for me personally than the 40D.

So, that's it. Not much else to say. I preferred how the Canon felt in my hands but the view through the viewfinder on the Nikon was much much better.
 

OdiN

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Mar 1, 2000
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Take a look in a 1D Mark III's viewfinder sometime. :p

I made the mistake of messing with one over the weekend. I want one so bad :(
 

soydios

Platinum Member
Mar 12, 2006
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taken from another thread, my feelings on the 40D:

Eh, I was at Best Buy the other day with a friend sending his laptop in for repair (I was there to make sure he wasn't pwned by Worst Buy, but thankfully the guy at the customer service desk knew what he was doing), and I browsed over to the DSLR section. The Rebel XTi felt puny in my hands, like the grip is designed for 8-year-old hands. The D40 felt slightly smaller than my D50, but better than the 400D. The D80 felt nice.

But what surprised me the most was when I picked up the 40D. The camera felt perfect in my hands. It was very solid and well built, the viewfinder blackout was short, and the shutter sounded good. Obviously the zoom and focus rings turned the wrong way from my perspective as a Nikon user, but other than that it was nice. But then I tried to adjust things, and I realized that you have to move your right hand from that comfortable and secure position to adjust damn near anything on the camera. Example: to turn on the top LCD, you have to pull your hand up and over the right side of the camera, reach ACROSS the LCD, and push the button. Doing this requires that you support the camera body with your left hand in the process. Oh, and the power switch is at the bottom of the back. :frown:

Canon is all well and good once everything is set up and you're taking pictures, but before and after that I find it a pain, because nothing is in easy reach.
 

OdiN

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Mar 1, 2000
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The top LCD is always on - half press the shutter to wake the camera out of sleep mode.

Power button - what difference does it make? When in sleep mode it's pretty much off. And just a half press of the shutter button wakes up the camera in .15 seconds - so there really is no need to turn the camera off until you are finished with your day of shooting.

I find everything that I use on a regular basis to be in easy reach for me.
 

soydios

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Mar 12, 2006
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the top LCD backlight isn't always on. sorry for not being clear, that's what I meant.

I routinely turn my camera off when changing lenses.

Nikon ergonomics allow you to almost never move your right hand from being ready to hit the shutter button.
 

OdiN

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Mar 1, 2000
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Originally posted by: soydios
the top LCD backlight isn't always on. sorry for not being clear, that's what I meant.

I routinely turn my camera off when changing lenses.

Nikon ergonomics allow you to almost never move your right hand from being ready to hit the shutter button.

I tried a Nikon DSomethingorother this weekend that someone there had. I hated the on off button being around the shutter button and I thought Canon's shutter button felt tons better than the Nikons :p

To each his own.

I find I can flip the on/off switch on the Canon with my right thumb easily enough...but I have big hands.

And when changing lenses...you're going to need both hands working with the lenses too.
 

foghorn67

Lifer
Jan 3, 2006
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Originally posted by: soydios
Nikon ergonomics allow you to almost never move your right hand from being ready to hit the shutter button.

So does the Canon's. Honestly. You need to give each system more than 5 minutes.
 

dug777

Lifer
Oct 13, 2004
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Originally posted by: OdiN
Originally posted by: soydios
the top LCD backlight isn't always on. sorry for not being clear, that's what I meant.

I routinely turn my camera off when changing lenses.

Nikon ergonomics allow you to almost never move your right hand from being ready to hit the shutter button.

I tried a Nikon DSomethingorother this weekend that someone there had. I hated the on off button being around the shutter button and I thought Canon's shutter button felt tons better than the Nikons :p

To each his own.

I find I can flip the on/off switch on the Canon with my right thumb easily enough...but I have big hands.

And when changing lenses...you're going to need both hands working with the lenses too.

How you can find enough bile to hate the Nikon power switch is beyond me ;)

I can't see how anything could be simpler, or a more efficient use of space, and it doesn't get in the way in the slightest...

 

OdiN

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Mar 1, 2000
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Originally posted by: dug777
Originally posted by: OdiN
Originally posted by: soydios
the top LCD backlight isn't always on. sorry for not being clear, that's what I meant.

I routinely turn my camera off when changing lenses.

Nikon ergonomics allow you to almost never move your right hand from being ready to hit the shutter button.

I tried a Nikon DSomethingorother this weekend that someone there had. I hated the on off button being around the shutter button and I thought Canon's shutter button felt tons better than the Nikons :p

To each his own.

I find I can flip the on/off switch on the Canon with my right thumb easily enough...but I have big hands.

And when changing lenses...you're going to need both hands working with the lenses too.

How you can find enough bile to hate the Nikon power switch is beyond me ;)

I can't see how anything could be simpler, or a more efficient use of space, and it doesn't get in the way in the slightest...

I don't like it because it seems that with it there - the shutter button doesn't feel as nice as on my Canon. Maybe it's nothing to do with the power switch and it's just the shutter button itself :p

It's not horrible or anything, I just like the feel on my Canon better.
 

pennylane

Diamond Member
Apr 28, 2002
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I tried a 20d today. The viewfinder is nicer than my d50. But as a Nikon user, I found the location of the power button to be kind of weird. I could reach it with my right hand, though I have kinda big hands, too. I think it mostly has to do with being used to a Nikon camera beforehand than anything. The 20d is much nicer to hold than the Rebels I've tried. Those are too small I think.
 

Heidfirst

Platinum Member
May 18, 2005
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As a Minolta/Sony user I'll throw in my 2 cents.
The Canon 40D interface/handling to me isn't as nice/intuitive as either the Minolta/Sony or the Nikon (or indeed Pentax) but we are all very adaptable & no doubt a lot of it is what you are used to.

I'm sure that if any of us spent the time to get really acquainted with any of them that we would have few real complaints.
 

rudder

Lifer
Nov 9, 2000
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Originally posted by: Heidfirst
As a Minolta/Sony user I'll throw in my 2 cents.
The Canon 40D interface/handling to me isn't as nice/intuitive as either the Minolta/Sony or the Nikon (or indeed Pentax) but we are all very adaptable & no doubt a lot of it is what you are used to.

I'm sure that if any of us spent the time to get really acquainted with any of them that we would have few real complaints.

The Canon thumb wheel FTW!!! Just a personal preference of course... but its a nice big control that you do not have to put much thought into feeling for while busy shooting.

 

Heidfirst

Platinum Member
May 18, 2005
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as far as I can see they aren't just comparing the sensor though which the title would lead you to believe but the sensor plus the camera's processing of the data.
e.g. they say that the Nikon would be a poor choice for astrophotography yet the Sony A700 which afaik we know uses the same sensor (possibly barring the AA filter) seems to be very good for that.


& it's a shame that where possible they didn't use the same model of lens but in varying mounts to minimise variables.
 

dug777

Lifer
Oct 13, 2004
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That's an appalling article.

It's either incredibly clever, and put together by an asshat who doesn't have the slighest idea how to communicate with another human being, or it's complete crap.

I'm guessing it's the former, but for fsck's sake, take some bloody photos and compare them. If you can see a difference, announce it to the heavens, if you can't, stick it fair up your clacker ;) What this article needs is some sense of perspective, at least from someone who's actually going to take photos with it, not grunt angrily about centroids and quantizing histograms :p

Not only that, but to suggest it's a test of sensor capabilities seems to me to be complete nonsense. They haven't eliminated the in-camera processing magically, unless the pixies they've employed can plug their little eyes directly into the sensor outputs, and describe the results in some incredible and independently processed output of their turds :p

 

OdiN

Banned
Mar 1, 2000
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I agree dug.

I don't care about stuff that technical when it comes to cameras. Both the D300 and the 40D take excellent photos. Period. One might be better at certain things than the other, and vice versa.

I didn't even read most of the article because it doesn't talk about photography at all.
 

ElFenix

Elite Member
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Mar 20, 2000
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Originally posted by: Heidfirst
as far as I can see they aren't just comparing the sensor though which the title would lead you to believe but the sensor plus the camera's processing of the data.
e.g. they say that the Nikon would be a poor choice for astrophotography yet the Sony A700 which afaik we know uses the same sensor (possibly barring the AA filter) seems to be very good for that.


& it's a shame that where possible they didn't use the same model of lens but in varying mounts to minimise variables.

it may be impossible to turn off some processing.
 

Heidfirst

Platinum Member
May 18, 2005
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Originally posted by: ElFenix
it may be impossible to turn off some processing.

exactly & that's why the article title is wrong - they aren't comparing only the sensors but the whole imaging process.
& we know that Nikon does something very different in their processing to pretty much all the others.