gdanmitchell
Offline
• • • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
|
 p.3 #20 · Moving to FF: Stick with Canon or Switch to Nikon? | |
stanj wrote:
Not being Dan, I will answer for myself as I think it applies to most of us: my clients' needs have increased. Just as photographers need to increasingly think outside the box when it comes to composition and execution, the same applies to resolution. Your average photo that would have been amazing in the 80s just doesn't turn people's heads anymore. Same with resolution. Personally, in the 80s I was printing 8x10 and thought how huge things were. Now I make a 20x30 without even blinking an eye.
Being Dan, I must point out that the material you quoted was not what I wrote, and it doesn't represent my point of view. I will migrate to a higher MP Canon camera at some point, for reasons I've explained before.
(I have done the math, so I would not migrate to system with greater sensor resolution unless the difference was quite significant. For example, an increase from 21MP to, say 28MP would not be compelling to me. An increase from 21MP to 36+MP would be. If the 5D3 design had gone in that direction, I would almost certainly have upgraded. However, the increase is not compelling enough to make me consider moving to Nikon since I can produce really excellent work with the Canon gear right now... and I'm willing to wait a bit if I have to for this upgrade rather than go through the disruptive exercise of replacing all of my gear for more MP for a year.)
Someone used the word "crucial" to describe the differences between cameras - I think it was related to dynamic range. Not all differences are crucial. Some differences produce an advantage - I'll always take more dynamic range and less noise and higher resolution if I can get it at a reasonable cost. But not all advantageous differences are "crucial." For the sake of argument, let me grant the notion that a Nikon camera has, let's say, more dynamic range. I'm all for that, but... I'm not running into that many situations in which the increase would make a difference - the situations in which my current gear cannot produce the photograph quite well and the supposed DR increase from the Nikon would cover enough additional ground to make it worthwhile. To explain that, a shot could fall into three categories in this regard.
1. Both the Canon and Nikon cameras can handle it.
2. The Nikon can handle it and the Canon handles it a little less well (to go with the proposed argument).
3. Neither the Canon nor the Nikon can cover it.
By far, virtually all of my subjects fall into the first and third categories. That second one is the smallest one of all - the place where whatever added increment is claimed for the Nikon camera would make a noticeable difference in a photograph - so the question again is, especially with no camera is perfect and my current camera works very well, a cost/benefit one.
I, too, make 20 x 30 prints (or thereabouts) on a regular basis today and they look great. But while the 36MP Nikon (as I've said many, many times) looks like a fine camera and can support equal print resolution at slightly larger sizes, it just doesn't make sense for most people to consider switching brands on this account when:
a. most talking about this rarely if ever produce such large prints.
b. Canon will undoubtedly equal or exceed this sensor resolution in fairly short order.
c. aside from a few of you whose clients apparently ask you to use sensors with more than 22MP, most of the world has never encountered such a request from an actual client. ;-) (Of course, if you do... then the economic implications are different.)
As I wrote earlier, our OP in this thread has a somewhat different set of issues than I have, in that he was (IIRC) thinking of going from a Canon system that is almost entirely based around EFS lenses to a Nikon full frame system. If one feels compelled to make a brand switch, despite the fact that this rarely leads to better photographs, in his case the time is good.
Dan
(Who reminds anyone who managed to make it through this post, that I would argue the same principles if we were talking about a Nikon to Canon switch as well. Switching brands is very rarely going to produce the improvements in performance, much less in photographs that people imagine.)
|
