“My research indicates the Canon 40D is a DX camera, which will effect how ‘wide’ your lenses will functionally be. There is approximately a 1.5 magnifying effect, making a 35mm seem more like a 50mm, for example. I would suggest perhaps a 24mm or 28mm as a starting point. I’d probably lean more towards the 24mm. That’s my $0.02 worth.”

Still my two cents worth. Have fun and happy holidays!

I will be back thanks again
Chris

The best analogy I can come up with is the difference between old film point and shoot cameras and 35mm SLRs. The point and shoots usually used 110mm film, whereas the 35mm SLR cameras obviously used, well….35mm film. The smaller negative produced by the 110mm cameras meant you couldn’t enlarge the final print very much. In fact, the typical 4×6 inch ’snap shot’ was pretty much at the outside limits of that film. If you’ve ever seen an 8×10 inch enlargement from that film, you would have noticed the significant ‘grain’ and ensuing softness of the image.

A DX sensor is 1.5 times smaller than a 35mm negative. In other words, those of us who started shooting back in the day, couldn’t help but notice, when we switched to our first DSLR, that we couldn’t seem to get as much image within the frame as we were used to. That’s because we were, in essence, shooting with smaller ‘film’.

Now, of course, Canon and Nikon both have full frame cameras, meaning the sensor is now the same size as a 35mm film negative.