071103_125316_0001 Canon, The Next Generation (Canon 40D, Sat 03 Nov 07)

National Maritime Museum, Darling Harbour, Sydney, NSW, Australia

It had been 3 and a half years since I bought the Canon 300D. These days I wouldn't think of replacing a camera in such a short period of time. My current flagship, the OM System OM-5 is just over 2 years old and counting, and it's going nowhere for at least another 5 years.

The difference is in how technology advances. Whether it be computers, phones or digital cameras, it starts out hellishly fast as designers get feedback on what works, what doesn't, which development paths have potential, and which need to be abandoned. A new model released 6 months to a year later will be faster and more capable, and not just by a little bit but by a huge amount.

However this frenetic pace of development will eventually taper off. Yes, improvement is still a constant, but the magnitude of that improvement will get smaller as the technology matures. Which is why I don't see my OM-5 going anywhere soon. 2 years on, it's still near the top of its field.

This was not true in the early 2000s. The 300D's sensor was slow and dull compared to the ones from only a few years later, whether it be in terms of resolution or ISO range or by any other metric. Its data handling was positively glacial. Maybe not if you were shooting .jpg but as soon as you move to RAW it was like waiting for a woodpecker to chisel the image into wood and move it into the card.

I wanted something faster and larger and with better image quality and was better built than the cheap and plastic 300D and the answer was... moving up one family line and getting the mid-range 40D.

If you've read the captions of any other shots in the Book of Firsts album you'll already know that it was bought from Foto Riesel, then of York Street in Sydney. The order was placed on Tuesday 16 October 2007 at 12:40 (so I was probably on my lunch break), but the first shot was... not until 03 November?

Yes, it's an unreliable memory - and there is nothing on the invoice to confirm it - but I think that they needed to order it in and I went into town to pick it up on the Saturday that it arrived.

The price was $AUD 1,704. That is $AUD 2,687.54 in 2024, just a bit more than the 2025 cost of a 90D which is the 40D's distant, 32.5 megapixel APS-C descendant. Canon is pushing its R series of mirrorless cameras at the moment, probably with a view to phasing out DSLRs in the future. In that range the price is equivalent to a modern EOS R8, a 24.2 megapixel full frame capable of doing 4K 40p video and ISOs up to 102,400. That's a smidge ahead of the 40D's 10.1 megapixels with an ISO of 1600 (or 3200 with come custom functions), oh, and no video. But again, have you seen the price of Canon's lenses??

As I discussed in the 24-105mm lens shot in the Book Of Firsts album, I was already considering replacing the 40D in 2013 when the 24-105, my main walkaround lens, failed for the 3rd and final time. My issue with the 40D wasn't its image quality and it wasn't its speed. Part of it was its size and the size (and weight) of its lenses. Part of it is that I wanted the option to explore video. Would I still be using the 40D had the 24-105 lend not failed? No. I would probably have used it for a couple of years longer, but I think I would have ended up moving to the OMD range anyway because on balance it just works better for me. The friend who I gave my Canon lenses on long term loan to still uses a 40D, and he's happy with it.

Again I wanted something significant for the first shot, and decided on the HMB Endeavour, a replica of Captain James Cook's ship from 1770 which lives at the national Maritime Museum at Darling Harbour. Had the weather cooperated, this probably would have been a nice shot.

Since I wanted to use the camera (and had a project like The Book of Firsts in the back of my mind even then), I had to get the first shot out of the way so that I could move on to other subjects.

And so... here it is. It's probably the most important "first" of the first decade of the 2000s in the sense that it took me from amateur level gear up to near professional gear, both up front and behind.

Taken in: Australia / New South Wales / Darling Harbour (show map)

Taken on: November 3, 2007

Tags:

Darling Harbour

Endeavour

National Maritime Museum

Sailing Ships

The Book Of Firsts

Sydney

New South Wales

Australia « less

Sets appears in: • The Book Of Firsts

Groups appears in: • Darling Harbour - Sydney AU

Camera: Canon EOS 40D, f/16.0, 1/80 sec, 47mm, ISO 100 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon EOS 40D
Lens:	EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM
Aperture:	f/16.0
Exposure Time:	0.013 sec (1/80)
Focal Length:	47mm
ISO:	100
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Aperture-priority AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	Uncalibrated
Software:	Adobe Photoshop 25.9 (Windows)
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