I am tired of Canon offering similar or inferior products to Nikon and pricing them significantly higher.
...you mean, like featherweight Big Whites, the TS-E 17 and 24 II, the MP-E 65, the built-in radio flash ETTL triggers, the entire Cinema line, the 12 FPS 1DX...?
Get a grip, man. Nikon's got a marginal advantage on one aspect of one feature of their cameras -- one that even comes with far more substantial image quality problems than it "solves" (color balance problems especially).
Sure, Nikon ekes out an extra stop or two of shadow recovery in scenes with truly miserable light. And if you make your living shooting in truly miserable light and you really need ISO 400-equivalent noise in your four-stops-pushed shadows as opposed to ISO 1000-equivalent noise, then maybe the D800 really is best for you.
But don't kid yourself into thinking that Nikon's making better cameras, let alone a better camera system. The stop or two of "extra" noise in the Canon shadows notwithstanding, the 5DIII blows the D800 out of the water. Color rendition, autofocus speed, autofocus reliability, framerate -- all those things that separate a modern camera from a Brownie, the Canon has the D800 beat hands down.
Cheers,
b&
I wouldn't say Nikon is beating Canon in only one area. They seem to be making consistent improvements in the area of AF (Nikon's new 51pt AF system still performs extremely well against Canon's 61pt AF, and not only do they keep f/8 AF, they have NINE f/8 AF points! Canon seriously dropped the ball there, and its hurt their reputation with birders and wildlifers, as well as anyone who used TC's with the supertele whites.) Nikon also seems to have a very superior sensor in their mirrorless cameras, both in terms of DR and AF capabilities. Metering is another area where Nikon is ahead of Canon, and have been for years. The 1D X's RGB meter would be the only real competition, and its yet to be seen if it is as accurate and capable. Its also relegated to that one camera...iFCL is used everywhere else, and its good, but quite lacking compared to Nikon's 3D full-color metering.
When it comes to lenses, I think Canon definitely wins hands down these days...their lens technology has always been on the cutting edge, and with nanocoating on all their lenses, featherweight whites, 4-stop IS, DO lenses, and spatial resolution up the wazoo they are kicking the crap out of all the competition. I think they are solid competition with Zeiss lenses, and with the advent of SWC nanocoating on their lenses, are far superior to Zeiss' T* multicoating. I don't think anyone surpasses Canon in terms of lens options and variety either, especially with the variety of specialty lens options like the MP-E. Their new flash system is pretty amazing, too. I'm not much of a flash user, however I moderate a photography forum, and people seem fairly excited about the new line of flash equipment.
Canon's only real weak area is their sensor fabrication. They had to cut corners with their latest AF sensor, and they effectively "cheated" to get the SNR of the 1D X and 5D III sensors "up to snuff" by weakening the CFA color filters for red and blue pixels. I would also be willing to bet that Nikon is leveraging their relationship with Sony to build AF sensors that have very low read noise, which is probably how they managed to break through the f/8 AF barrier and have multiple f/8 AF points. Canon excels everywhere else...it really is time they put some more R&D into their CMOS sensor tech, not just image sensors but ALL of their CMOS sensor tech. Its time to eliminate noise, and move into the modern era. Canon seems to have patents for a layered (Foveon-esque) sensor design as well. If they could develop a layered sensor with the same pixel pitch as the 1D X, that might propel them back to the forefront, and really turn some heads.
A 35mp+ layered megapixel monster (105mb, by Sigma's counting standards) would be the kind of game-changer Canon really needs. ;P I highly doubt the rumored high MP camera from Canon will actually be a layered RGB design,
but it would certainly peak my interest.
