Does this camera have the dust clearing feature, and how does it differ from the 40D?

Thank you BrendaP. I currently own Nikon 35mm equipment and have to decide if it would be worth changing over to Cannon. For some reason I feel the dust cleaning option is necessary. Would you have an opinion on which Nikon would be comparable to either the Cannon 30D or the 40D? Also, do you personally own one of these camera's? thanks again. Dee

Hi Dee,
I do own the Canon 40D, and absolutely love it. My main reason for buying it, though, was that I owned Canon 35mm equipment already. It is my opinion that when you're dealing with cameras of this level and you already have existing equipment, you need a pretty compelling reason to switch systems. In other words, either a Nikon or a Canon DSLR is going to do an excellent job.

In terms of a Nikon equivalent, it gets a bit tricky because the two systems tend to "slot" together, meaning there are no exact side-by-side comparisons to make, instead the cameras will sort of fit around each other in terms of price and features between competitors. The closest comparison I've found to the Canon 40D is the Nikon D300... which is quite a bit more expensive than the 40D and has some more advanced features. The D300 has a more advanced AF system, more advanced lighting systems (d-lighting, metering, white balance) than the 40D. This explains the price tag.

Aside from my existing ownership of Canon equipment, I bought the 40D because the D300 offers a lot of things I don't think I would use. This is just me personally; even if I hadn't owned the Canon lenses already, because I shoot in Manual a lot but don't tend to adjust many settings that often, I didn't feel it was necessary to pay extra for loads of features on the D300. Some of them are certainly handy, don't get me wrong; but if you don't use Autofocus or the LCD that much, then you won't really care that the camera has super-advanced versions of those things. That was my position. I hope that makes sense.

You, owning Nikon equipment already, may very well feel differently. The D300 might be what you want to look at; you can also consider the older model, the D200, for a price that's more in line with what the Canon 40D is at.

I hope that helps!

Edited to add: Regarding dust cleaning, it's a great feature. It helps more than you'd think it would, frankly. The D300 does have a self-cleaning sensor, the D200 does not. However... having said that, it is possible to manually clean a sensor that doesn't clean itself, and it's not a terrible thing to do; I've done it and found it pretty simple.

Thanks again Brenda, The info. you provide is amazing! I work in a Portrait Studio with an Olympus e-1 and we used it yesterday (all day) out on location w/ a digital flash unit and a battery pack. In the studio everything is plugged in and pretty much fail proof. I've got to tell you that I was really disappointed in the recycle time of the flash. It was a Pet Event and nearly impossible to capture based on the flash. We went through 2 sets of Digital Batteries for the day and I thought that could get very expensive. I've never had that experience photographing even a Wedding (8hrs. plus) w/ my film camera. As to the Nikon camera's, I have already looked at the D300 and LOVED it, just couldn't afford it. I have a SB50DX flash unit that I am now told wouldn't be compatible with the Digital Camera's and even my lenses won't necessarily work in autofocus for instance with some of the camera's. I saw a co-worker's personal Cannon 30D with a Sigma 18-200 lens and was pretty amazed with the camera, which is why I started wondering about switching in the first place. Seems I still have alot of thinking and comparing to do. Thanks again for helping me. Dee

If the things you have now wouldn't be compatible anyhow, I consider that an excellent reason to consider a new brand. You'll have to replace all that stuff (flash, lenses) anyhow if they wouldn't work with the new camera. I just shot a wedding yesterday with the Canon 40D and had no problems with either flash recycle or battery life; in fact, the wedding was over 12 hours and I didn't even have to switch to my backup battery, and I wasn't using a battery grip. I think it's a great unit for these things and the 30D is a very similar (older, thus cheaper) alternative. Good luck selecting and let me know if you have other questions!