1. Shooting Your First Canon EOS 40D Picture

If I were a betting person, I’d be willing to wager that you’ve already taken—at least—a few hundred shots with your new Canon EOS 40D. As valuable as a book like this one is, nobody can suppress their excitement long enough to read the instructions before initiating play with a new toy. My first photo with this camera was a snapshot of the owner of the photo store where I bought my 40D. As a long-time Canon owner, I purchased just the 40D body (sans lens), but I remembered to take a favorite lens and a Compact Flash card with me when I picked up the camera. Because the 40D had just been introduced, there was enough of a maintenance charge in the fresh-off-the-boat battery to allow capturing a few images on the spot, even before the ink on my check was dry.

That’s how easy the EOS 40D is to set up and use: it’s not a point-and-shoot camera, but if you have some experience with film or digital SLRs (especially if you have worked with the EOS 30D or 20D), you can assemble all the pieces, flip the power switch, remove the lens cap, and then point—and shoot. And, even if you were not already familiar with this camera, you were able to figure out what that big switch on the back labeled OFF and ON does, and, probably, aligned the big ‘ole dial on the top surface with one of the icons representing things like a person (portrait), flower (close-up), mountain scene (landscape), or runner (sports activity). (These are the Basic or “scene” modes.) So, this first chapter is not likely to be your first exposure to using the Canon EOS 40D.