p.3 #3 · What would you be shooting if Canon didn't exist?
My film cameras were Minoltas and one Pentax. I never owned or even considered owning a Canon or Nikon film camera. My first "serious" digital camera was also a Minolta. If the people who designed the 20D had gone to work for Minolta, I might still be with Minolta.
p.3 #6 · What would you be shooting if Canon didn't exist?
If Canon didn't exist, hypothetically, how much money would I have? Lots? I'm shooting Leica. Not lots? Nikon.
If I had the same money to invest into another camera system as I have put into Canon so far, I could either have a moderate Leica kit or a nice Canon kit. Either way, if you had told me 4 years ago that I would have spent this much on digital photography equipment, I bet I would have never jumped in. Looking back, I'm sure glad I did though.
p.3 #8 · What would you be shooting if Canon didn't exist?
I'd easily be shooting Nikon. In fact I came very close to adding a D300 to my camera line-up recently because it had almost everything that I was looking for in a DSLR. Fortunately the 7D came along and saved me from having to buy a whole host of Nikon lenses to go with that D300 and it has exceeded my expectations. When I chose my first AF camera 'way back in 1994' (an eternity in digital years!) it was a toss-up between the N90 or the EOS A2. After reading everything there was to read about both systems I chose the A2, not for any technical reasons but because it simply felt better in my hand than the N90. Both systems are comparable and mirror each other to a very large degree and I like both systems equally (cameras are cameras and as long as they do the job well I don't care what name is on them), but it's not economically feasible to have both although the D300 was almost worth the expense to me. I still use my manual Nikons pretty frequently; in fact today my FE is riding in my camera bag along with my 7D. Some old habits die hard, I guess...
