Thread: DSRL: Canon vs Nikon

Since all times it's been a known fact that Canon and Nikon are rivals, especially on DSLR cameras. If you own a DSLR camera from one of these companies, please share with us your opinion, and let's see who is better and affordable :cute:

DSLRs are often preferred by professional still photographers because they allow an accurate preview of framing close to the moment of exposure. I prefer canon DSLR camera.

i would go for nikon simply because it is more user friendly than canon. picture quality is same in both .

I would go with Cannon though Nikon has some pretty good high end stuff as well.

Originally Posted by camar

i would go for nikon simply because it is more user friendly than canon. picture quality is same in both .

Indeed, nikon is more user-friendly, canon is oriented to the business users. Although a semi-pro user can use a canon with no problems.

Nikon and Canon are as good as each other. Each are multi-billion dollar optical companies who have been making some of the world's best optics for numerous consumer, military and industrial applications for decades and decades.
Each makes lenses as parts of multi-million-dollar steppers used in making electronic chips with more precision anything needed for photography, and each make other optics that sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars in other applications. They each make our cameras and lenses out of the same stuff from which they create these other products.
I don't extend this same awe towards discount lensmakers, but I do have this respect for Nikon and Canon and Pentax and Leica and Fuji and Zeiss who've been making much more than cameras for longer than I've been alive. I do have a hat off to Tokina, who are related to Hoya, who are as far as I know the biggest maker of optical glass on the planet, and whose glass is found in parts of everyone's lenses.
They are different, but just as good. Anyone who tries to tell you that one or the other are garbage isn't paying attention, and most likely doesn't have the other to sell you. Nikon and Canon compete so heavily against each other that if one really were better or worse they would have gone out of business long ago.
I prefer Nikon DSLRs, and Canon Compacts. Just as many others prefer Canon DSLRs and Nikon Coolpix compacts.
Year to year one usually has an edge on the other. They tend to leapfrog each other back and forth.
I've been shooting Nikon since 1980. I've never had any reason to sell everything and start over. Why would I? I have always had over a half-dozen lenses at any point in time, even when I was in school.
If I did start over today I'd just as likely go Canon. I have a Canon A70 and SD700point-and-shoots, but no Nikons. I have a Canon QL-17 rangefinder camera, not a Nikon. I prefer the ergonomics of my Nikon DSLRs, but that's me.
I'm enthusiastic about Nikon's gear today because it's so much better and cheaper than what I had to use 10 or 20 years ago. Life was tough in the manual focus days. Even the crappy Nikon zoom lenses today are much better than the classic manual focus ones I used before. Nikon has never given me so much as a free hat, even for all the free publicity I give them on this site.
Since Nikon still can't deliver 2005's 18-200mm, I decided it's time to start trying Canon and reviewing everything I can from them, especially all their lenses.
I've always been curious, so it's time to find out. I hope that using both cameras doesn't confuse me with different locations of knobs that winds up interfering with my ability to make photos. I have a Canon 5D and Rebel XTi on the way and will be testing all their lenses. I've already tested a bit of Canon gear as you can see on my Canon page that's been around since 1999.
Nikon and Canon are each primarily lens companies, not camera companies. It's sad to see people buy good cameras and put off-brand lenses on them. The main reason I bought my XTi is to use the great Canon 10-22mm lens!
Did you know that Nikon is one of the world's leading makes of professional laboratory microscopes, often beating out Zeiss and Leitz? Nikon also makes the million-dollar lenses and mechanical steppers used in semiconductor manufacture. They have a 37% market share. These lenses and mechanics resolve at 45 nanometers, or less than one-tenth of a wavelength of visible light? That's over 10,000 lines per millimeter! See Nikon Precision.
Canon may make their own ICs and image sensors, but for all we know, Canon may use Nikon lenses and steppers to do it! Probably not: Canon also makes steppers and semiconductor photolithography equipment, with a 20% market share. (Thanks to Bates Marshall for those figures.)
Canon also makes gigantic lenses with 100x zoom ratios for television! These sell for six figures.
Making $20,000, $2,000 or $200 lenses for either Canon or Nikon is child's play. Their big stuff sells in the $200,000 to $2,000,000 range. We photographers get to benefit from all of it.


SYSTEM COMPATIBILITY
Nikon
Most Nikon camera and lenses made since 1959 are compatible with each other.
The Nikon system is so renowned for its multi-decade interoperability that I have aNikon System Compatibility page discussing it

Canon
Canon cameras can use Nikon lenses, but Nikon cameras can't use Canon lenses.
On the other hand, Canon flushed compatibility down the toilet in 1985 when it created a new and completely incompatible system of AF cameras and lenses called EOS. Nothing works together before or after the great divide of 1985.
To Canon's credit, the new EOS system is a better design than the old Nikon mount, but old Canon FD manual focus lenses, once promoted as "timeless" by Canon, are useless today on modern Canon cameras. Contrast this to Nikon, where just about every lens ever made works swell, with few limitations, on every brand new camera.
Every Canon AF lens works on every Canon AF camera, including the digital SLRs, except for Canon's EF-S lenses, which only work on some of the newest 1.6x cameras. 1980's Canon AF lenses work great on every current Canon camera.

Delivery

One big difference between Nikon and Canon is delivery of new products.
A good thing about Nikon is that they announce products a couple of months before they become available. You never feel like an idiot having bought a camera that goes obsolete the next day. Canon, on the other hand, usually has cameras available when they announce them, so you can get caught off guard.
Unfortunately Nikon does this to a fault. It's good to announce something a couple of months before it comes out, but bad to take orders and not be able to deliver.
Nikon has been doing this at least since 2000. They announced the 80-400mm VR in January, 2000. It was a year and a half later before you could buy them easily!
Nikon Announced the D100 in February of 2002 and it was a year until you could get them easily. I had bought a D1H the week before, but didn't worry even though I would have preferred the D100, because I didn't have 9 months to wait for one.
Nikon announced the 12-24mm in February 2003 and took a year until they were easy to find.
Nikon announced the D70 in February of 2004. That only took a couple of months to get.
The 18-200mm VR was announced on November 1st, 2005. Nikon still can't ship them to all the people who've ordered them over a year later.
Since so many readers ask me to review Canon, I've decided it's about time. Canon actually ships their products.
Contrary to some beliefs, I get paid nothing by and have no allegiance to Nikon or Canon other than having used their great products for the past decades.

gl

Both are pretty even I think. I voted Canon though

I used to be a big Nikon fan but in the last two years i have sent two bodies for repair and both times been told there is nothing wrong with them. I'm now ****ed at nikon and have cameras that are now out of warranty and don't work. My next body will prob be from Canon.

I go for Canon too. i have not used Nikon.

I think Canon is better. Some of my friends uses Canon and the others, Nikon. Comparing the quality of their photos, I like the result for the ones who uses Canon. But then again, maybe the Nikon users uses "obsolete" cameras.