photographer tip tuesdays | "The Switch" | week one
Jan 07, 2009
(Let’s pretend it’s still Tuesday.) :)
The most common questions in my inbox these days center around our switch from Canon equipment to Nikon gear.
Our Canon sell-off has prompted a fresh round of email questions, so I thought I’d better tackle it here!
The most common question: Why did we switch?
First off, let me just say that I’m not a proponent of switching camera systems. It costs money and time, and I believe that eventually whatever you’re coveting in the one brand will be adopted by the other. When we bought our first Canon DSLR, it was with the thought that we would be Canon people for life.
However, when we bought into the Canon system, it was as amateurs. We liked Canon’s commitment to its middle range products. We were buying into it with different needs.
We began considering a switch to Nikon the day the 5dmkII was announced. (And we were not alone–a lot of wedding photographers jumped ship in the days after announcement.) The features Canon chose to add to the 5d seemed to solidify that commitment to its middle range and pull the 5d farther away from the pro side of “prosumer.”
What ticked me off about the 5dmkII?
– The larger files. The files from the mkII are twice as large as the files coming off the original 5d. This means twice the number (or size) of memory cards, twice the hard drive space, and most importantly, everything I want to do on the computer (from opening the file to saving it) takes twice as long. If I was in the poster business, this might interest me. However, my clients rarely order or print anything larger than an 8×10. A 12 mp camera is plenty. Anything bigger just adds expense and time.
– The video capability. Don’t get me wrong–a lot of photographers are excited about this. I’m just not one of them. I have no desire to be a videographer–I just want to be an awesome still photographer. I don’t like paying for a capability that I don’t need, and it irritated me that Canon was putting energy into something that seemed largely billed at the consumer level (making it easier to sell them a more expensive camera if it can also be justified as the family video camera) and not at pro photographers whose business is still photography.
– No innovation in the auto-focus. Some photographers who have received the mkII in the last few weeks have said that they notice an improvement, some say that they don’t notice a difference, but according to the specs and press releases, there was no major auto-focus revamp, and this is something I’d been looking for them to do.
– There are other minor things that annoy me, like the new battery (more expensive and not compatible with the 20/30/5d batteries that we already had in spades), battery grip (which doesn’t take an extra battery like the old 5d grip) (luckily, this isn’t true–the initial press release said it took one battery, but the product descriptions now say it loads one or two, so I have nothing to complain about there :D ), and the lackluster high ISO performance.
We decided to hold off and wait to switch until the 5dmkII began shipping and we could hear a bunch of independent reviews and find out if the 5dmkII ISO performance could compare to the D3 and D700 (the official word is that the D3 and D700 are better, though by a small margin).
We spent a lot of time talking about it, and pricing out what a switch would cost us both in terms of real dollars and opportunity cost (we were due camera upgrades anyway), and one day in October I realized that even if the ISO performance turned out to be great, it didn’t change my autofocus disappointment, the giant files, or the overall feeling that Canon was aiming the 5d farther away from their pro cameras (the 1d and 1ds).
As hobbiests, we had plenty of time to wait for the advantages of each system to even out over time. But as a pro, I didn’t want to wait for Canon to boost their autofocus to Nikon’s level. Nic argued that we’d made plenty of money off the equipment and could well justify the relatively low opportunity cost of the switch.
So we gave Nikon a try. I got the D3, the SB-900 flash and the 70-200 f/2.8 VR lens. Then added the 85mm f/1.4. After shooting Belinda and Justin’s wedding with the D3, I was sold. It’s not a perfect system (I definitely have my complaints, which I’ll get into next week), but for shooting weddings, I can’t see ever going back. If I only shot portraits, I would want to be with Canon. But for weddings, I need that extra Nikon ruggedness and auto-focus reliability.
Coming next week, my thoughts about Nikon vs. Canon. And don’t worry, it’s not all glowy Nikon love. :)
Posted in Photographer Tips
