For me it’s a choice of which camera system makes me want to get out shooting. A lot of cameras for whatever reason don’t have character in the hand.
My top 3 of cameras/brands that make me excited to get out shooting are:
Pentax
Leica
Canon
All of the others are rather boring with either poor haptics or button layout, poor menus or poor feeling lenses.
As for image quality, having moved from a 5D4 to an R5 the image quality is superb and I no longer have any issues with shadow recovery and don’t see any reason to go to Nikon or Sony for image quality now.
As for Nikon, I noticed early on that the Z7 suffered banding in shadow recovery from the sensor based AF pixels, which the canon R5 doesn’t suffer from, nor the D850 as it didn’t have those AF pixels. How is the Z8 and Z9 for that? Has it been improved?
I think that once Canon fills out the RF lens lineup with missing L primes and an R1 body, there won’t be much to ask for. This is why I am sticking to Canon.
For me, it is a Ford/Chevrolet thing. Both make very good trucks and both would make great farm trucks for me. It used to be that way with John Deere and Case farm equipment but Case fell way behind and quit making cotton harvesting equipment. There are these brand wars going on all over and they will continue.
Back in my film days my first camera was a Canon A1. I loved that camera and for its time was a leading edge camera. It was only manual focus and you had to load film into it. I learned a lot about cameras and used several different consumer cameras over the years.
My personal photography path started 20 years ago. My personal path began when the wife when we became empty nesters and I saw a video slide show from Wyman Meinzer called West Texas. Meinzer is a renowned wildlife photographer in Texas and was named Texas State Photographer.
At that time I could have chosen a Nikon, Canon or many other brands. For whatever reason I chose the Nikon 600 and invested in lenses that fit the camera be it Sigma, Tamron or Nikon Lenses it turned out to be and excellent choice as a few years later I upgraded to the D750. A year or so later I was chosen to shoot for a fan website for Texas Tech Sports. In a year, the website was purchased by a national set of affiliated college fan sites. 247/CBS. I didn't know what the heck I was doing but I learned and the next year I purchased a D500 and it was the perfect camera for sports and wildlife shooting.
Over the years I have owned a D850, a Z6II and now the Z9. These were all upgrades done because I was getting more professional work from documenting wind turbine construction, artwork for local banks and wildlife photography for ads and artwork.
My point in this thread is that it was my passion that got me into photography and not the brand or the bodies or lenses. Sure it was exciting to get a new camera or lens and try them out. I could have chosen a Canon, Pentax, Olympus or other brands. At that point I could not afford to invest in another system or another brand. I had my lenses and my bodies. Going the Z route gave me the opportunity to continue to shoot my G lenses while slowly moving over to the Z lenses.
The only time that feel, menus or ergonomics came into play is the first day I picked up the D600 and looked through the lens and looked at the menu. No Nikon camera or lens that I have purchase has disappointed me and I doubt no camera or lens would have disappointed me had I purchased the Canon ecosystem.
For me it is the passion of getting that great shot.
scott_sauer wrote:
For Nikon, I noticed early on that the Z7 suffered banding in shadow recovery from the sensor based AF pixels, which the canon R5 doesn’t suffer from, nor the D850 as it didn’t have those AF pixels. How is the Z8 and Z9 for that? Has it been improved?
duncang wrote:
The Z8 and Z9 will not improve much beyond where they are today. The latest Canon and Sony cameras have added additional hardware to improve their subject detection and autofocus. Nikon's brand new release, the Z8, is a generation behind in terms of subject detection and autofocus abilities.
Canon has not advertised or stated anywhere any hardware change that improved their autofocus. The R5, R3, R6, and R6 II all use the same processor with no extra hardware. It is purely software improvement.
fotografur wrote:
He who generalizes is generally wrong.
He may be insufferable but not all Sony users are like this 🙄
Wow, thanks for clearing that up. I know there was a lot of confusion about whether every single Sony user comes to FM and hyperbolically brags about their equipment.
Newer tech usually always trumps older tech, but as others have pointed out these cameras are all so good there are very few shots you would ever really miss from any of these brands.
Jesse Evans wrote:
Canon has not advertised or stated anywhere any hardware change that improved their autofocus. The R5, R3, R6, and R6 II all use the same processor with no extra hardware. It is purely software improvement.
Not sure this is correct. While I can't find an official Canon page stating this, there are many posts online talking about how the Digic X processor is considered a family of processors, not a single processor. Apparently the R3 processor is different than the R5 yet they both say they use Digic X. The R10 also uses Digic X; could it really be the same as what's in the R3? *shrug*
marsguy wrote:
Not sure this is correct. While I can't find an official Canon page stating this, there are many posts online talking about how the Digic X processor is considered a family of processors, not a single processor. Apparently the R3 processor is different than the R5 yet they both say they use Digic X. The R10 also uses Digic X; could it really be the same as what's in the R3? *shrug*
They are the same processor. The only difference is the amount of ram. The autofocus on the R10 and the R8 is every bit as good as that of the R3.
groob wrote:
Wow, thanks for clearing that up. I know there was a lot of confusion about whether every single Sony user comes to FM and hyperbolically brags about their equipment.
duncang wrote:
There has been no leap-frogging of Sony who have been the undisputed mirrorless leader ever since they entered the market, first with the A9 and then the with the A1. And there is still no sign of any real competitor to the A1.
Nikon have just managed to enter the market with half decent offerings (Z8/9) - but these are a generation behind in terms of subject detection and autofocus - they will need new hardware releases (with neural engine) to keep up with what Canon and Sony are doing in their midrange cameras.
I find it interesting that someone out there thinks Sony is the undisputed mirrorless leader.
When discussing with friends and colleagues, Sony usually doesn't even make the list these days. It's all Nikon vs Canon.
That's not to say that Sony is bad, but just that they don't have anything unique. No "wow" factor like the others.
Nikon is making awesome new strides for wildlife photographers with their excellent, affordable long lens offerings as well as built in TC's.
Canon is making new strides with unique offerings like the 28-70 f2 which others have mentioned is an odd gamechanger.
Sony is just the ole reliable. Nothing spectacular, but it can get the job done.
This is like a bunch of golfers arguing their driver goes 5 feet farther than yours
If you can't achieve your desired results with any of the recent bodies from Sony/Nikon/Canon then look in the mirror and get yourself to the driving range.
I know we're getting way off topic here, but I thought I'd share my own perceptions of Sony as a Sony shooter.
I started with the original a7 when it was released. At that time Sony was the new kid on the block and there was constant criticism and dismissal of the system for the first couple of years from the DSLR crowd (not a real camera, a toy, an appliance rather than a camera etc.) While there is some truth to some of the sentiments, they are exaggerated in the same way that stereotypes always are and the Sony community seemed to feel the need to defend the system at that time.
At some point Sony was able to flip the script and become the main player in the mainstream photography enthusiast mirrorless space, and I feel like a lot of the community gained a sense of entitlement from that and started insulting the other companies for their shortcomings. I find this ironic when I look at the big picture, since Sony had a rough start with poor ergonomics early on, terrible battery life, an odd lens lineup with a very inconsistent design language and other random issues.
I'm a mental health therapist and I see a lot of parallels between the brand war issues and other disagreements that people tend to have as a society. I feel like our lack of curiosity and openness to other people's preferences and opinions gets away from a more collective harmonious existence. I've used multiple systems at this point and wish we could just acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses of each and respect other people's opinions that might differ from ours.
40Driggs wrote:
I'm a mental health therapist and I see a lot of parallels between the brand war issues and other disagreements that people tend to have as a society. I feel like our lack of curiosity and openness to other people's preferences and opinions gets away from a more collective harmonious existence. I've used multiple systems at this point and wish we could just acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses of each and respect other people's opinions that might differ from ours.
THIS! It should be an opening quote for some of the threads on this forum.
40Driggs wrote:
I know we're getting way off topic here, but I thought I'd share my own perceptions of Sony as a Sony shooter.
I started with the original a7 when it was released. At that time Sony was the new kid on the block and there was constant criticism and dismissal of the system for the first couple of years from the DSLR crowd (not a real camera, a toy, an appliance rather than a camera etc.) While there is some truth to some of the sentiments, they are exaggerated in the same way that stereotypes always are and the Sony community seemed to feel the need to defend the system at that time.
At some point Sony was able to flip the script and become the main player in the mainstream photography enthusiast mirrorless space, and I feel like a lot of the community gained a sense of entitlement from that and started insulting the other companies for their shortcomings. I find this ironic when I look at the big picture, since Sony had a rough start with poor ergonomics early on, terrible battery life, an odd lens lineup with a very inconsistent design language and other random issues.
I'm a mental health therapist and I see a lot of parallels between the brand war issues and other disagreements that people tend to have as a society. I feel like our lack of curiosity and openness to other people's preferences and opinions gets away from a more collective harmonious existence. I've used multiple systems at this point and wish we could just acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses of each and respect other people's opinions that might differ from ours. ...Show more →
Your last paragraph especially is a type of wisdom rarely seen on photo equipment boards - thank you.
40Driggs wrote:
I'm a mental health therapist and I see a lot of parallels between the brand war issues and other disagreements that people tend to have as a society. I feel like our lack of curiosity and openness to other people's preferences and opinions gets away from a more collective harmonious existence. I've used multiple systems at this point and wish we could just acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses of each and respect other people's opinions that might differ from ours.
Agree whole heartedly, there are good and bad things about all the available systems today. I am very much enjoying my Nikon system, but I'd be lying if I said there aren't good alternatives in all the big 3, even in Fuji. Heck if Canon came out with an affordable Z8 or even Z7 analog that had the ergonomics I liked, I could probably build a whole system on the EF adapter and cheap used EF glass.
The FTZ works great but nothing can touch the absolutely monstrous amount of cheap used EF glass out there with 0 compatibility issues.
Canon users never got an update to the 5DsR for one. Probably because Canon got busy on mirrorless after that. Nikon users got D850.
So probably as a consequence of that, you had people saying Canon is in trouble yada yada yada around 2018 as Nikon really popular over the D850. Another consequence is that Canon users had the R5, 3 years ago, comparable to the Nikon release today.
