on the 40D design ...

All electronic equipment has a rate of decay. As soon as a new product has been released, the old equipment no longer fulfills even the original requirements/specifica​tions

Chandler. wrote in post #3891884
I can't answer any of your other questions, because I don't own a 40D, but Olympus, not Canon, was the first to integrate Live view into a DSLR.

I could be wrong but I think the Canon 20DA had Live View before any of the Oly bodies had it.

petiot wrote in post #3892587
Funny thing is that, I never ever mentioned nikon even once in my initial thread (I did that on purpose) and YET, two people managed to suggest i should switch to nikon. Hey guys, what's wrong with you: it is not because one doesn't like EVERYTHING in a canon camera that he has to, or will switch to nikon.

it is funny, but i have the growing impression that there is an implicit, tacit, heavy canon protectionism deeply engraved in the mind of people coming to this forum. Ohhh fear of the Nikomunism uh? lol

Or maybe i am just too picky of a customer ... yes i should just shut up and buy every release without ever criticizing either canon's product or their marketing philosophy ...

Hell not!! I like having nice kit to take photo, and I want the customer to be driving the boat, not the brands! so, no I don't dive blindly into this marketing crap. and i question it. I would have imagined that if the user contributes, a brand can only become better. And i guess i am right (see dpreview's conclusion on the 20D review).

So to recap, I am interested in understanding why canon makes such good products on one hand, and on the other tries to trick people by selling 2 inches of foam tape as weather sealing, aren't you? Well you should! I am interested in understanding why they didn't just leave the card and battery doors as they were on the 30D, not you? Maybe they feel that they are in the need to do that because the competition grows stronger on this point, don't you think so?

Is a 900 000 pixel screen really useful, does it drain more battery?, is canon right in not putting one on their bodies?, would it cost so much that they would need to save somewhere else? (did sony do that?).

Well that is what i consider to be interesting and stimulating questions as far as gear discussion is concerned, but maybe i am wrong. Instead i am seeing threads such as :
"Can 40D take good landscapes?" 40 replies, 200 views .. so far i really thought a good photo was taken by the guy behind the camera ... But I must be completely stupid or something
"who has 40d": 95 replies 2500 views!! Oooooh yes me me i have one, me me. And me i ordered one, yes i swear!! Look at it, i took photo of my camera ( ... lol something sounds strange here don't you think: "photo of my camera") wow so exciting isnt it!!
and so on

Anyway, have a good time thinking that canon is THE mighty brand and that it is in your interest to ignore what they do wrong and what other brand do right. I am pretty sure that they are quite happy to have a "not too picky" (to say the least) customer base.

For someone without an acclaimed Nikon axe to grind I sure see a lot of sparks flying.

JWright wrote in post #3895164
I don't think I've ever seen this level of whining and sniveling about a Canon release.

Whatsamatau? Weren't you around when the 30d was released?

I agree to some extent that Canon could've delivered a better LiveView or proper weather sealing. but the 40d is a good upgrade as it is. I wish it has more AF points and higher res screen. For the most part, I have yet to see a photo shot from the 40d that is better than a 10d.... let alone the 20d & 30d.
Nikon's D300 looks to take the 40d to school if the paper-specs come to reality.

A previous poster hit the nail on the head: IF Canon would sell a camera with the feature set of the D300, at around the $1800 price point, many of us would buy it in preference to the $1300 40D.

I'd buy two of 'em, for less money than one Mk III. Which is one more Mk III than I'm going to buy short of winning the lottery. If I'm at all representative of the potential market, such a camera wouldn't cannibalize sales of the flagship cameras. There are far more of us who would use an $1800 camera than will ever buy a $4500 one. If Nikon can put some of the important features of their kilobuck bodies into the prosumer line, so should Canon.

There are some very valid points of criticism related to the 40D. The "new" grip, at a much higher price, offers barely anything more than the "old" grip, while exhibiting a bit of incredibly stupid industrial design. Why is there no "AF-ON" button on the vertical grip??? Does Canon think that we're going to buy the grip, and then only shoot horizontals? Or that we'll train ourselves to use the AF-ON button for horizontals but remember that we have to do something completely different when composing a vertical? Dumb, just dumb, and at the price, completely inexcusable.

And the LCD screen: don't just make it bigger, make it as sharp as those on competing cameras. Let us judge sharpness on it: it can make the difference between shooting something indoors at ISO 800 or 1600. If the 800 shots are sharp, great; if not, kick up the speed. But make the screen useful while we're working with the camera.

I think it would have taken quite a lot of work to get that extra button there. With a serial interface, you can add more commands, to report new buttons. But look at the interface - there are quite a lot of signals between grip and body. If the design uses one pin/button signal, you need to add one more pin - without that pin breaking the compatibility with the 20D or 30D. Or you have to make the grip intelligent, and let it and the body autodetect each other, so that one or more signals on the grip changes function and becomes a serial interface when the grip detects that it is used on a 40D. But, there must be some magic "hint" for the grip to see, to know that it is connected to a 40D.

pwm2 wrote in post #4058300
I think it would have taken quite a lot of work to get that extra button there. With a serial interface, you can add more commands, to report new buttons. But look at the interface - there are quite a lot of signals between grip and body. If the design uses one pin/button signal, you need to add one more pin - without that pin breaking the compatibility with the 20D or 30D. Or you have to make the grip intelligent, and let it and the body autodetect each other, so that one or more signals on the grip changes function and becomes a serial interface when the grip detects that it is used on a 40D. But, there must be some magic "hint" for the grip to see, to know that it is connected to a 40D.

The thing is, the new 40D grip didn't need to be backwards compatible with the 20D and 30D. I guess it was nice of them to provide that backwards compatible option, but I think the new button layout demanded a new vertical grip design that mirrors the button layout of the built-in grip. It wouldn't be the first time they broke backwards compatibility with a new grip if they had redesigned it properly--the D30, D60, and 10D used the same grip, while the 20D and 30D (and now 40D) use a different one. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there were even any new buttons or anything added to the BG-E2 (20D grip) over the BG-ED3 (10D grip), so the change was cosmetic. That's a lot less justified in my mind than a functional redesign to add a button to the new grip.

I guess people who want to separate AF and AE lock are forced to set the 40D custom function to swap the * and AF-ON button functions if they use the vertical grip a lot. In practical terms that wouldn't be a problem for me personally since I use the * button to focus anyway and it would feel natural, but it's a bit dodgy to not offer the option to use an AF-ON button on the vertical grip. I would say might as well not bother with an AF-ON button at all since I consider the vertical grip essential for my use, but many would disagree I'm sure.

On the other hand, I've harped on the virtues of the D300 grip's physical design a lot, but let's not crown it the perfect grip just yet. Inexplicably, you can only put 1 battery in the vertical grip, while the other battery stays inside the body in the usual built-in grip area. How is this a good idea? I don't want to remove my grip every time I change the batteries. Maybe somebody can shed some light on why Nikon (and Pentax with the K10D grip) decided this was the way to go?