Canon 40D manual focus

Has anyone used the Canon 40D? Is the viewfinder on the body good enough for accurate manual focusing? I want to use a 1.4x Canon Extender, so will be losing AF with my lens.

My current setup is a Canon XTi using a Canon L-series 100-400 zoom (got the best versatile glass I could afford). I will be looking towards getting the 40D at some point. Any experienced comments on manual focus with this body will be very much appreciated.

I am clearly in the beginner phase for photography and hope to learn from the group. This will be a hobby for me, so there won't be an income to justify the higher-end bodies. Thanks to all! :)

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Originally Posted by Jayc

Has anyone used the Canon 40D? Is the viewfinder on the body good enough for accurate manual focusing? I want to use a 1.4x Canon Extender, so will be losing AF with my lens.

My current setup is a Canon XTi using a Canon L-series 100-400 zoom (got the best versatile glass I could afford). I will be looking towards getting the 40D at some point. Any experienced comments on manual focus with this body will be very much appreciated.

I am clearly in the beginner phase for photography and hope to learn from the group. This will be a hobby for me, so there won't be an income to justify the higher-end bodies. Thanks to all! :)

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Jayc, I've had 2 40D's. Not any more. The 1.4 extender will be OK for MF and the viewfinder is bright enough for MF. You should be able to get sharp focus. No problems with that lens. It's a good camera and should be adequate for your needs.
Anne

If you use the black Tamron extender or the Canon extender with pins taped (have not done it, can't tell you which pins), you can still take advantage of the in focus beep with the center focus point. I often use my 400 f5.6 with the Tamron 1.4X this way. Autofocus using this trick is too unpredictable for me, but I find the in focus beep on manual focus very helpful to my aging eyes :)

Thanks Anne. That answers my questions about MF on the Canon 40D. I hope to move to that camera body within the next year.

Thanks Andrew. After I move up to the 40D body, I'll being using a 1.4x extender. My zoom lens even at 400 doesn't give me enough reach for some of the birds I try to capture. I'll try your focus beep trick on MF.

Jay,

I use two 30Ds and my favorite lens for BIF is the 300mm F4 IS with the 1.4X on it (420mm). This gives good auto focus (slower than without it but acceptable and accurate)

I do ALL of my wildlife hand held and sold my much loved 500 F4L IS as it was simply too big and almost impossible to keep up with flying or running animals and with the 300 I get two IS modes (hardly used) and 420mm and on the odd occasion I attach the 2X KENKO and manually focus at 600mm with excellent results (The IS here is handy)

Hope this helps.

Thanks Chris. Your input & advice is much appreciated.

Jay