My "Dark Side" Experience

I totally agree with your assessment. I really like Nikons innovations when it comes to their bodies. It appears to me that Nikon marketing is building their brand and aim for the pro-sumers. Canon just seems to want to save on their R&D and do the minimum and match the most noticable features of the competitor. This is kind of a smart strategy since they can undercut the competitor with their savings.

Personally I don't want to see more megapixels in cameras. Better ISO/low light performance would be ideal. In my book Canon is shooting it self in the foot because some one like me will wait much longer to upgrade to the next body.

My biggest complaints about Canon are "iffy" AF and inaccurate metering. And ETTL.

Not being a "prosumer" I could be happy with just two good lenses covering wide to tele range, so the 16-85 and 70-200 lenses would be all I want, for a long time; this and either D90 or D300 would cost me just a tad more than what I've spent on Canon gear.

I do, however, hope that Canon would get their act together, so for another year or so I am set. If they don't, I know I can always sell my lenses & get Nikon line up for roughly the cost of a new 50D, on top of selling my current gear.

Nikon, however, seems to have a few problems of their own - reliability issues with their Dxx level bodies, high cost of lenses, etc.

kagetora13 wrote in post #7835180
I totally agree with your assessment. I really like Nikons innovations when it comes to their bodies. It appears to me that Nikon marketing is building their brand and aim for the pro-sumers. Canon just seems to want to save on their R&D and do the minimum and match the most noticable features of the competitor. This is kind of a smart strategy since they can undercut the competitor with their savings.

Eh I think it might be they're developing something very -advanced- behind the scenes....ie, a far improved processing engine to go with these new high res sensors, ie, I'm expecting Digic V to be something

I mean keep in mind that Nikon's D70, D70s and D80 were considered "meh" products, the D90 got them back in the game, same with the D300, the D100 and D200 were not the best products they had and were not really competetive with Canon..

Canon has hit a slow point, Just like Nikon did, Nikon is just bouncing back, and Canon, while maybe getting caught with their pants down, isnt going to linger too long...

Amamba wrote in post #7835599
My biggest complaints about Canon are "iffy" AF and inaccurate metering. And ETTL.

Not being a "prosumer" I could be happy with just two good lenses covering wide to tele range, so the 16-85 and 70-200 lenses would be all I want, for a long time; this and either D90 or D300 would cost me just a tad more than what I've spent on Canon gear.

I do, however, hope that Canon would get their act together, so for another year or so I am set. If they don't, I know I can always sell my lenses & get Nikon line up for roughly the cost of a new 50D, on top of selling my current gear.

Nikon, however, seems to have a few problems of their own - reliability issues with their Dxx level bodies, high cost of lenses, etc.

Yeh you're lucky, My problem is if i went Nikon I'd lose my stellar 100-400, and I love that lens to death

The 16-85 is a pretty eh lens from what I heard, I really wanted one till I read that optically, you get much better performance from a dedicated ultrawide zoom [ok a bit duh here..but still] especially in terms of distortion and such..

Also the Bokeh I heard was weird at a couple spots in the lens...

What I read about the 16-85 somewhat turned me off to it, the 16-85 I actually like is the Sony Zeiss one [Which has Quality control issues, but besides that is one of the best lenses for APS-C cameras right now]

I also have had much of the same experience. I too was a canon shooter for a long time. I had a 350D, 400D, 2 20Ds (one died, kept one as a backup) and a 30D after the 20D came out Canon really seemed to get lazy with the xxD series and it really pushed me away. After my 30D died I had to make a decision. Buy a 5D, never a bad option, but the age of the body really put me off. I had hoped my 30D would last me until the new 5D came out. Sadly a hard day in a sand storm sealed my 30D's fate and I realized after 2 dead bodies I needed something that would take a little more abuse. Not being able to afford the 1D Mk III, I was pushed over to Nikon. The only thing I really hate about Nikon is how stupid their lens line up is. My D300, D700 and D90 are all amazing cameras, but the lenses paired with them are beyond stupid. I have been forced to look for the best 3rd party lenses for my cameras out of spite and really the more 3rd party lenses I use I start to wonder if there is any real need for me to drop a lot of money on first party glass anymore. The only real benefit I see is the O-ring on the mount to help keep the crap out of my camera. No one is going to be able to tell me that if I shot the same photo with a 50L and a Sigma 50 1.4 there is going to be any noticeable difference.

I guess I'm in the same place these days. Some where in the deep dark land of camera limbo. Feeling like I don't belong to either big club, because my lenses don't have the fancy brand names on them...

Supersignet wrote in post #7836604
I guess I'm in the same place these days. Some where in the deep dark land of camera limbo. Feeling like I don't belong to either big club, because my lenses don't have the fancy brand names on them...

Just look at what some of those guys get, and remember that it's the photographer more than the equipment by a long shot. Me with my little Sigma 70-300 APO and 40D on the sidelines of an Ohio State football game looks out of place, but everyone that sees my photos can't get enough (not trying to say I'm a pro, but I can hold my own).

I always have to tell customers in my store the equipment doesn't matter that much. Just be sure you like to use it - so you WILL use it, people don't normally use what they don't like - and go out and take pictures. Although cost can become an issue at times, the simple fact is there is a lens out there for every manufacturer that will get you the shot you're looking for. Besides, if you don't have the money for new equipment, go out and get the shot in a different, creative way.

Well, I'm not at the level where I can set all things in manual and be right most of the time, and Canon's exposure algorytm definitely doesn't help me as much as Nikon would.

And the AF - lots of shots so slightly out of focus, with different lenses, after the body's been serviced by Canon, convinced me that this is a design issue and not a flaw with a particular camera or lens.

And ETTL... it's very unreliable, I get better results setting flash in manual and guessing the settings.

For me, any major investment in photo equipment right now is out of question, but hopefully in a year or two the economy picks back up and by then I would be due for an upgrade anyway. And I am really tempted to go the Nikon route - all I need is 2 lenses and a flash and a good camera body anyway ! (By the way, I could get a Nikon version of Tamron 17-50 - it would work with D300 - and not worry about the possible issues with 16-85).

Honestly, my hopes of Canon getting their AF and metering issues fixed on their XXD series in the near future are slim - there's really nothing forcing them to do it, if there's no visible sales impact.

My first SLR was a Canon A-1 which I still have. Here we are 20 years later and I'm still a Canon guy. The lenses are the deal, you're right. Canon's fast primes, wide options across the board and all the other stuff is what seals the deal.

Though I have strayed to another "dark side" as it were... Rangefinders, my first love (before I went SLR). I'm shooting a Zeiss Ikon and Leica M8 along with a handful of Zeiss ZM lenses. The system makes a nice alternative and even supplement to the Canon gear and I'm actually pretty happy with it all. But the Leica stuff makes Nikon look like a cereal box prize in comparison... Their lenses are around $3-6k for the better ones (Summilux at f/1.4) and even $10k for their Noctilux; a 50mm f/0.95 lens. Keep in mind that these lenses are manual aperture and focus, no less. But the results... Wow. Makes even Canon L primes sweat.

NorCalAl wrote in post #7819199
First, I shot Canon for many, many years. When I was a teen, when I was in my 20's in the military and then again in my 40's when I got into digital. I loved my XT, 30D and 40D. I started becoming disenchanted when the 50D came out and just seemed to add what Nikon already had - plus some extra MPs. After lots of research into the bodies, I sold my Canon gear and went to Nikon.

I love my D300. Period. Incredible piece of hardware.

I hate Nikon lenses. Period. Why? Two reasons: selection and price.

With Nikon, you basically have two choices (three if you count manual focus models), pro level and consumer grade. The 14-24, 24-70 and 70-200 2.8 grouping is much the holy grail of the dark side. As well it should be as it will set you back nearly $6000! For three lenses, only one of which has Nikon's answer to IS - VR. That lens, the 70-200 is also criticized often for it's faults on full-frame.

Your other choice is plastic, variable aperture consumer-grade lenses. These are 3.5 - 5.6 zooms with decent IQ, but cheap build.

Canon offers consumer grade, f4 pro and f2.8 pro series lenses. Nikon doesn't seem to grasp that strategy. In fact, most of their new releases are consumer-grade crop-format offerings! Several of the new offerings (the 50/1.4 springs to mind) offer, for the first time, internal AF motors - but have been poorly received. Pro series lenses have just not been forthcoming.

I will say that, lens for lens, it seems Nikon's consumer-grade offerings are superior to Canon's. That is matched by the price you'll pay for them, as well.

The 16-35/17-40L from Canon might be matched against the 14-24 from Nikon. The Nikon is the clear winner here, but it's nearing $2000 with the recent price increases.

The 24-70 of Canon is matched by the same range zoom from Nikon - at nearly twice the cost.

The four 70-200 offerings from Canon are matched by the single 70-200/2.8 from the Dark Side. It's shortcomings are well documented - yet it sells for nearly $2000 new. All four Canon lenses whoop this thing in terms of IQ.

The 100-400? Well, sure, Nikon has the 200-400/4! Fixed aperture, VR and 8 pounds of glass. Very highly regarded. And should be for $5000.

No 300/4IS is offered, tho an older 300/4 with AF is available. At nearly the same price as the much more modern Canon lens.

No fixed aperture f4 glass (with the exception of the 300/4) is even offered. No pro-level f4 offerings at all.

As a plus, most Nikon lenses do have a five year warranty, however.

The last thing is the used Nikon market - terrible. I'm not sure if there are fewer shooters or fewer traders, but there are certainly fewer lenses on the used circuit. And they are more expensive!

I'm just rambling on here. Am I going to sell my D300? No. My 70-300VR? No. Or the 17-55/2.8 (which is FAR superior to the like-named Canon lens) or my 105VR Macro. But man, I wish so much that Nikon would take a page from Canon and produce some real pro level lenses for less than $2k! Or maybe Canon can do the same for prosumer bodies and make a D300 of their own.

I guess I'm done here. Just pointing out the grass, while appearing greener, may prove the saying that appearances can be deceptive.

You've basically written what's been in my mind for a while now. Completely open and honest thoughts in regards to both sides. Ha, we all try to find the compromises within the MFG's gear we use, but man would it be friggin sweet to mount Canon's lenses on a new Nikon body, because new Nikon bodies is really where it's at - it's just a different level of machine and anyone who'll argue that either had a bad experience or hasn't used one.

Ok, I'm going to actually go through and read this thread now

Edit - Actually there's one thing I disagree on - the 70-200VR. It's sharper in the center with better contrast wide open that Canon's 70-200 2.8 with or without IS. I will say though, I don't think there's a better zoom in existence than Canon's 70-200 f/4 IS and If I ever come back to Canon, it'd be the first lens I buy.

nicksan wrote in post #7819887
Yep, lenses are what's keeping me on this side.

X2 .

Here's some food for thought as well. I had to deal with Nikon service here in Long Island. Long story short, after a couple of trips to repair a binding zoom ring on the 24-70 (was a new defect), they offered to replace it with another lens they had in the building. I declined and they cut me a check for the amount I paid on my receipt. It took a week to get it in the mail, but when have you ever heard of Canon doing such a thing? Talk about standing behind your product.. I'm sure there's folks out there that have had similar experiences with Nikon as I've had in the past with Canon service, but of all the times I was ready to rip my hair out with Canon service and the multitude of trips to Canon service, they NEVER ever offered such a thing.

Canon service usually gets high marks, but I wasn't too happy the one time I sent a lens in for work. That, however, had nothing to do with me switching.

The "stupid lens" comments are right on the money. When I first switched and saw all the posts about how great this Sigma was or that Tamron was, I was thinking "did they make them better for Nikon?" In my years as a Canon shooter, third party lenses were, FOR THE MOST PART, a choice based on funds, not function. So I was initially very confused.

Then there were all the posts about how great the consumer grade Nikons were. It took me a while to realize the real deal was not that the 3rd party lenses were so much better on F-mount nor that variable aperture plastic lenses with Nikon on them were so great - it was that there were few other choices!! (I could make some bar and late hour joke here, but I'll refrain)

I, too, feel somewhat like a man without a manufacturer. Up till my 30D, I always felt like a Canon man. Nikon needs to make some moves to fill in their lineup, cause Canon will catch back up in body tech and it won't be long.

Amamba wrote in post #7838106
Well, I'm not at the level where I can set all things in manual and be right most of the time, and Canon's exposure algorytm definitely doesn't help me as much as Nikon would.

I'm not meaning to pick on you personally, but you've captured a number of comments so consider my response to be general.

When I bought my first Canon (an F-1), it metered the same way my previous cameras had. In all those cameras, there was a cadmium-sulfide (or a silicon photo diode) cell buried in the prism somewhere that pointed in the general direction of the ground glass. Actually, that F-1 was more precise--it use a pellix mirror built into the focus screen to point half the light reaching the center 12% of the image to a CdS sensor at the edge of the screen.

(Canon was famous for the accuracy of that meter, but Nikon at the time, even with their megabuck F2, bragged incessantly about their special "center-weighted" metering.)

They all worked the same way: You set a shutter speed, held the camera to your eye, and rotated the aperture ring until the needle was centered. Or, you set the aperture, and rotated the shutter-speed dial.

The skill involved was deciding where to point that particular camera so that the meter saw the portion of the scene that represented the light most appropriately for the way that meter worked.

It's amazing, but many of us at the time were just kids, with no real experience or skill. This was long before I knew anything about the Zone System, or owned a 1-degree spot meter, and so on. Even so, gazillions of amateur photographers like me managed to make good exposures on film such as Kodachrome 25. (God, do I miss Kodachrome 25.) Or Ektachrome, which required an exposure accuracy probably within a half-stop range, or, especially, Velvia, which really wants to be within a quarter stop. And we had to wait a week before we knew whether we got it right, which we did nearly every time.

So, now that we have evaluative metering that tries to find an exposure that will balance the average illumination in a multiple zones of the image, we think the camera is imbued with some psychic ability to know which parts of the scene we want to be bright and which parts dark. Nutz.

Modern camera metering algorithms are based on a set of rules that assume we are making pictures the same as most people, but that don't have the ability to know whether that backlit background is important (and must have detail requiring less exposure) or unimportant (so that it can be blown out, allowing more tonal range in the shaded area). A Nikon may do some sorts of situation better because those situations were part of the assumptions made by their software designers, while Canon will get other exposures close to right in other situations. To say one is better than the other is to give up our responsibility to control the photographic process.

It's not that hard.

Focusing is the same. My wife's Nikon isn't any smarter than either of my Canons, but it guesses better once in a while, despite that it can't get the white balance right, etc.

Rick "who has endured 35 years of Nikon and Leica snobbery, only to enjoy the giggling of large-format photographers aimed in their direction" Denney

rdenney wrote in post #7840071
The skill involved was deciding where to point that particular camera so that the meter saw the portion of the scene that represented the light most appropriately for the way that meter worked.

Best statement I have read on POTN, and one I absolutely agree with.

The eye of the photographer is the single most valuable gear.

I have a couple of the Nikons, the D3, the D700 and some of the Nikon lenses. they are good cameras, They are reliable, seem to focus well, take very good pictures, and some of the lenses I have seem to be of some quality. Would I switch? no...but I've said that before.