Please try to keep comments just on the lenses. Let body issues continue on other threads. If you think either company offers particular lenses that offer unique functionality—that the other does not rival at all—those might be interesting to hear about.
I am going to put this on both forums.
This seems like a rather silly restriction to me.
There have been endless threads about how for shooting action at a distance/sports/wildlife a 1d4 with a 300/2.8 has the same FOV as the various d3 flavors with a 400/2.8; but almost everyone can manhandle a 300/2.8 much easier than a 400/2.8, not to mention the big hit in the pocket book you take having to use a 400 instead of a 300.
At the other end the great Nikon 14-24 on a FF Nikon body with nice clean high ISO files has lots of fans.
No one shoots with a camera body or with a lens; we all shoot with lens attached to bodies.
@ragebot: "This seems like a rather silly restriction to me...No one shoots with a camera body or with a lens; we all shoot with lens attached to bodies."
Your point is undeniable. But the point of the question was to put the emphasis in a different place. Most people concede that camera system manufacturers like Canon and Nikon—along with most users—keep lenses around longer than bodies, at least these days. So if you are trying to evaluate a system, it makes at least some sense to ask a lens-weighted question. And I was curious about the answer, because I'm not cognizant enough about Nikon's present lens system to know where they have strengths that Canon can't match—or even how well Nikon can match up against Canon's stronger offerings. Hence the question.
Nikons long tele lineup is way too $$$$ for my pocketbook. After buying the long teles I wanted, I have built up the rest of my Canon kit with great copies of good lenses, so there's no reason for me to look elsewhere.
About all I'm interested in now is upgrading my kit with a 35L and maybe a 50L.
ps. Count me in as one of the many who is glad to see Nikon putting some downward price pressure and upward feature pressure on Canon. It's going to be good for all of us as consumers in the DSLR market.
Most important is results (shots) not your gear. If you can manage your shot to be great with any camera brand you don't have to think about camera or lens changes. Nikon showed new models, so? Canon will stop because of this? This year we will have another 2-3 bodies from Canon and than we will compare.
