Why canon?

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JR

Sep 22, 2011
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About 15 years ago I was shooting Nikon (with film of course) but then sold all my equipment. About 18 months ago when I started photography again I was starting from a clean slate and originally bought the Nikon D7000! For some reason I did not like the feel and the IQ of it so I decided to trade it in quickly and instead go with Canon.

Originally the lens selection of Canon and the IQ of the 5D mk II sold me to the brand. Today with several L lens under the pocket, I often look at Nikon and ask myself: do they have the same lens selection as Canon and do they have a oke for like equivalent for each L lens I own? While Nikon makes great lens too, I could not live without my 50 1.2, 85 1.2 and the 135 for which I think NIkon has inferior product in that focal lenght.

Of course 18 months later I now also want a kick-ass AF system and better low light performance, but this is why I crave the 1DX!
 
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I first took up photography circa 1980 with an AE1 and later upgraded to an A1, augmented with a Mamiya C330 twin lens reflex. Mostly did B&W outdoor scenic and landscape work and my real passion was working in the darkroom graciously provide free of charge by the United States Air Force as part of the on-base recreation facilities. When the Air Force started closing down these darkrooms due to cost to equip and manage them, especially the disposal and handling of chemicals, the cameras went in to the closet and only came out very rarely for birthday parties and such. After awhile, they quite coming out at all and hadn't seen the light of day in well over 20 years.

When I had my first grandchild on the way, I decided to jump back in to photography and since I still had a bag full of Canon gear and lots of fond memories, that's where I started looking. After handling a number of bodies, the 40D just seemed to fit my hand right and I liked the controls, so that's where I started. I've since stepped up to the 5DMkII with a 70-200 2.8L as my main lens (mainly shooting natural environment/light portraits now).

I'm crazy in love with the IQ and color rendering I get but like a lot of other people, I do so wish Canon would step up with a better AF system. I participate in a highly regarded portrait photography forum that is populated with a lot of pros that shoot astoundingly good stuff and there's a hardly a week goes by when one of them doesn't announce they are switching to Nikon because they are tired of battling the 5DMkII AF weaknesses. I'm not there yet but I do often wonder if the grass might be greener on the other side.
 
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For me it also was based on what was available. My dad had (still has) a Canon A1 so that's what I started using first before I got my own AE1-P. It always did what I needed it to do and has been around the world with me a few times and been refurbished twice. I still use that one.

One of my best friends also happened to be a Canon shooter so we were always able to share gear. I never made the switch to the EOS system during the film days though. Just wasn't a big fan. I came close once to buying a used Nikon F5 once but then didn't though I really liked the feel of that one. Also, Leica R bodies made it on the short list a few times. Same with Contax. Olympus was nice as well and I actually just loaded my MjuII with a roll of film. But I always stuck to the Canon FD system (plus the occasional Canon digital P&S). Unfortunately, with digital there is no good way of using those lenses still. The aforementioned buddy bought a Samsung NX10 and still uses FD lenses with that one. It's a bit iffy though.

So when digital became more or less unavoidable I had to decide where to go since I needed to start from scratch. With unlimited funds I would have opted for the Leica M9. In the real world it became a decision between Nikon and Canon (and Sony for a very brief moment). In the end I chose what I was most familiar with. Both have their pros and cons. And Canon red just looks better than Nikon mustard yellow...
 
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My story is the same as some others. I wanted to get into photography and two of my close friends shot Canon. So I just bought the same camera as them. I probably should have researched Nikon a little more than I did. I knew that I should get Nikon or Canon but I really didn't know anything else about it.

But looking back and knowing what I know now I don't regret the Canon purchase. Nikon makes some great cameras and you can't fault anyone for choosing them. But I do feel that Canon's EOS system is a lot more unified than Nikon. Nikon has more backward compatibility which is great but it comes at the cost of a unified system. I'm sure Canon made a lot of photographers mad back in the 80s by switching to the EF mount but in the long run it was the right decision. And now Nikon has cameras with AF motors and some without AF motors and a bunch of lenses with aperture rings that don't actually need them on and on. It just seems patched together.

When I think about buying that first camera and how I had no idea what made a lens good, what an f-stop was, what ISO meant or USM, or IS. I learned so much so fast. I ate it up, I just loved photography and cameras. And still do of course.
 
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BlueMixWhite said:
I recently sold off all my nikon stuffs and ready to jump to canon because of the varities of lens available from Canon and also it's seem more affortable and more highly rated as compared to nikon. The way I see it, if i continue with nikon i couldnt afford those "N" lens as they are way over my budget. Whereas with canon, i could start of easier with the 24-105L f4, the 17-40L f4 and maybe the 135L f2 in near term.

My situation is kinda epic as my friends pointed out, i was so sure i'm going for the 5Dmk2 and at the same time a used 24-105L mint condition happen to passby and i got it without a body in hand. This all happen in Dec, and by Jan i'm ready to get my 5Dmk2.........but to my bad luck, my iMac logicboard decided to quit and can consider my iMac is total. The replacement of the logicboard is as close as a new iMac. Therefore i have no choice but to forego the 5D 1st and get my computer sorted out. Where as the same time i am also like some, having the dilemma whether i should wait for the mk3. ::)

Oh come on. If you can make the switch from Nikon to Canon you can also go from MAC to PC. It's really the same bang-for-the-buck issue only more so ;-)
 
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First reason is, that after a short talk with a couple of photographers, I was convinced I should buy one of the big brands. Around here, it's Nikon & Canon - I don't even remember when I've last seen a DSLR of a different brand.

Another reason I bought Canon was similar to kubelik's ...

kubelik said:
when I first got back in to digital photography I was looking for affordable consumer DSLR's. I noticed that a lot of Nikon bodies and lenses had asterixes next to them saying such-and-such would not autofocus with this lens because it lacked the motor driver.

I've found it confusing. Wikipedia's description of Canon & Nikon lenses & posts to a local photography equipment forums strengthened my impression that it's easy to select a Canon lens, and confusing to select a Nikon lens.

Another is posts I've read that Nikon's FX line is missing a few lenses, like a 70-200mm f/4. In retrospective, I would much rather have a 14-24mm over a 70-200mm f/4.

Finally, there were a few people who owned Canon and could let me work a bit with their equipment. E.g. two co workers have Canon equipment, and we exchange impressions of equipment and let each other shoot with each other's lenses. There wasn't and isn't anyone who would let me do the same with Nikon equipment.
 
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For me as a kid my parents (not photographers nor even really enthusiasts, they could have a roll of film last a year or two in camera) had a canon semi manual camera... I learned both cameras in high school photo and college, but when nikon first came out with the nikon d1x (their only digital camera at the time) and canon had their D30's and D60's, I liked the feel of the Canon, the system was more intuitive, I could pick it up and not have to change a ton of settings to get what I wanted... It was more user friendly. I found the nikon interface, like photoshop, had like 3 different buttons/menus to do the exact same thing and the D1x had 100's of options and such... was just too much for me to pick up and start shooting... I never really got comfortable with it. When the 10D came out I took the plunge and been using Canon ever since. I'm sure Nikon has refined it's camera/menu system, but it's a tad too late.
 
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I'd been using Canon compacts for a couple of years and wanted to move up to a DSLR, so I was leaning towards Canon because I was familiar with the menus. I went into a shop and handled both the 400D and the Nikon D40X. Both felt very nice in the hand, and they told me in the shop that there was nothing to choose between them. I preferred Canon's CF card to Nikon's SD.

But, and I'm ashamed to admit this, the main thing that put me off the Nikon was the red flash.
 
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Jul 21, 2010
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I shot Minolta and Pentax film SLRs, then after a long hiatus went looking for a dSLR in 2009. It was pretty easy to boil it down to Canon vs. Nikon based on lens selection alone. A couple of friends shot Canon, a couple of pro photogs we'd hired to do family portraits shot Canon, and the Nikon lens confusion was another factor.

One other factor was online information - the two sites I happend on early on were TDP and Nikonians. The former had detailed information on cameras, lenses, and accessories in a helpful, readable fashion, and the associated forum was congenial and friendly. OTOH, when I went to nikonians.org, I was almost immediately greeted with, "We recommend that you upgrade your membership to at least silver level to enjoy the full functionality of the Nikonians community," i.e. pay to play. No thanks.
 
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bycostello said:
happenstance in my original purchase and now locked in because of lenses... don't matter though which brand as i've said before it ain't the camera that takes the image...

Yep, pretty much the same.

When I rather arrogantly decided I could take great pictures I decided to get an SLR, a "real" camera. One of the best around at the time was the Minolta SRT-102 -- with the new TTL metering. Wow.

At work in the eighties, we used Nikon. In the early nineties when I had to buy my own stuff I went into a camera shop that sold Canon -- so that got me committed with body and glass.

But, as Costello says, whatever gives me a good image. Canon is as good as the next, better than most in my opinion.
 
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I honestly can't remember why I bought an AE1-P rather than a different SLR - I was 11 or 12 at the time and got it second-hand with the proceeds of singing in a church choir... I got all my family into Canon - both brothers and my father subsequently bought A1s.
I then went away from Canon for quite a while - mostly because the way I make money from photos can often rely on other people taking the photo (of me doing a procedure) - and I moved very early to digital and P&S (this was accompanied by scanning in hundreds of slides to use them in powerpoint). My most successful P&S was an HP850 - surprisingly good IQ straight out of the camera.
Came back to Canon when I wanted more from my camera for the increasing number of fun (i.e. non-earning) photos.... just wasn't happy with the IQ (or autofocus ironically enough) of my last semi-P&S (a Fuji s9600). Spent a long time trying to decide between Canon and Nikon - the lenses and the familiarity with the language of the lenses won it for me.... so I am now a proud owner of a 5D2 and saving up for more lenses....
Only problem is I now have to get other people to use the 5D2 well for the photos that I used to justify its purchase..... :-\
 
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Y

Yoshiyuki Blade

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For me, it's because I grew up seeing Canon in the house. I remember my dad using an old Canonet as far back as I can remember. It was before I even knew what name brands meant. The camera is still around the house and its nice to know what the controls mean now (I probably know more than my dad does because he's mostly been a casual user). Anyway, it wasn't long into my lifetime before I noticed my dad eagerly wielding his first film SLR, the Rebel in the early '90s (I was around 5-6 years old by then). I think it even came with a VHS tape to introduce the user to the camera because I noticed him watching something about Canon. I wonder why no such introductory media exists these days?

From that point forward, the brand just stuck around. My dad got a Canon "bubble jet" printer whose quality far exceeded those incredibly noisy ribbon-based printers. Enter the digital age, he bought a Sony P&S camera. We were actually shocked by how clean the image was and previously imagined it to be slightly better than something you'd get off of a web cam. A few years later, after looking into it more deeply, we figured a Canon P&S had better image quality and switched over to that. The build quality didn't match the Sony camera, but it the image quality mattered more to us. Around 2006 or so, my dad bought the Rebel XTi, which remained mostly unused as photography became less and less relevant in out lives. I had probably used it the most, and I even did some fun stuff like make timelapse videos from it, but overall it just collected dust.

But for some reason, my interest in photography spiked in pretty much the last half year or so. I learned most of the technical details of photography with the Rebel XTi and bought my first prime lens, the 50mm f/1.4. I was amazed by how sharp the images could be (when stopped down a bit, of course).

I suppose my dad had the itch to get yet another Canon camera and this time we decided to make this one count. We got the 5D MkII when the B&H xmas sales were all too tempting. Now I've spent the last month trying to tame this beast and make the most out of it. I've already taken some fresh, updated shots of the whole family, when we'd otherwise go years and years without a single shot taken. I hope to make photography more relevant now that this beastly camera is in our possession. It truly is out of our league since we're amateur/casual photographers and I hope to change that.

TL;DR: Canon was a household name growing up and I've stuck with it (not to mention Canon maintains its presence to this day).
 
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Superficial reasons: Because Nikon bodies are ugly, and I can't stand Ashton Kutcher.

Slightly less superficial reasons: Nikon has an illogical model number scheme, and you need a slide rule to figure out which lenses work with which bodies.

Genuine reasons: Because of the S100 (the circa 2000 version), it was my first digital camera, and was AWESOME (for it's time). And I just kept buying Canon from then on, progressing through the P&S models, through bridge models, and finally on to an XSi shortly after it came out. I got a 60D right after they came out to hold me over until the 5D3, if I had known it would take this long, I would have gotten a 7D.
Because of lenses. I perceive the Canon line to be better in areas that matter to me, and a better value. I don't have a huge glass investment yet, certainly small enough that I could sell it all and only lose a few hundred dollars, if I chose to switch. So it's not an investment that's keeping me here, it's a conscious, rational decision based on what I think is the best path for me.
And the newest addition... because of magic lantern. Seriously, it's that damn cool. And this is more based on the potential, than on any current feature of ML. Just the fact there is an active community, successfully working on firmware hacking, is a HUGE advantage on Canon's part.

Readers digest version: Came for the bodies, stayed for the glass, magic lantern was dessert.
 
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Way back when..... in 2003 after holding out a year or two to buy a digital camera, based on reviews on DPR and price point I bought a Canon PowerShot A80 4MP. Great P&S at the time, I still like the colours of those images. Anyhow, I really liked it and that lead to me buying another Canon P&S which I also liked. So when I decided to step into the world of DSLR, it was natural to go with Canon.
 
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