Canon vs. Nikon

I am a dedicated Nikon SLR / D-SLR user. Why? Because I liked the brand and have had brilliant experiences with all their products. Recently I got myself a compact camera, a Canon model, and now I can safely say that I am ALSO a dedicated Canon user…uh oh, am I going to get lynched by Canon and Nikon fanatics for mixing my products and enjoying both of them?

This post is targeted at recreational photographers, those who either use compact cameras or entry-level Digital Single Lens Reflex (D-SLR) – photographers who need an easy to use, sturdy, and good image quality camera. The photographic market is not only saturated with manufactures but also models, and finding the right camera can seem like a daunting task…

Two manufactures, who have been competing for years, and are highly sough after, are of course Canon and Nikon. Statements are often thrown around of either manufacturer being superior to the other, but I think such statements are nonsense.

Before becoming a professional freelance photographer, I used to work as a camera salesman. I sold numerous Nikon and Canon equipment over a period of two years and was often cornered by the question of which manufacturer was superior. I answered the question by simply handing the customer a Nikon and a Canon model, to let them play around with it.

The most important factors for the customers were:

1. build quality - does the camera feel like a piece of cheap plastic or is it a solid piece of equipment
2. ergonomics - does the camera feel comfortable when using it, can all the buttons and menus be accessed eaily
3. menu functionality -is the menu easy to use or are you getting lost in a maze of options
4. image quality - how close does it come to film quality

I would thus sell the cameras not purely on the basis of its image quality, but it’s overall functionality. And having been selling both Canon and Nikon equipment I can confidently say that the image quality was never drastically more sophisticated with either model. Also, those customers coming in with the set idea of either Nikon or Canon being better superior walked out purchasing the opposite make.

I’d like to go further than my personal opinion here, and have opted for a different kind of fact gathering concerning this debate:

What is the general online community using?

Flickr has this really useful options to compare camera statistics. When uploading images to this popular photo-sharing site it automatically gathers data from your camera. It can thus distinguish which cameras are used most often, and which are most popular.

So by having a peek at the most popular cameras used on Flickr it becomes quite apparent that Canon is a more common choice than Nikon. In this case, the cameras are entry level D-SLR’s.

This graph clearly shows that Canon is the preferred camera within th Flickr community.The following stats also show that most Flickr users use entry-level D-SLR’s. This of course makes sense since it is not a portal dedicated for professional photographers. In terms of most popular Point & Shoot cameras, Canon also is a favorite within this community.

What is also great is that you can look at photographs that have been taken with specific models. This would help you judge the quality of the camera, where as one needs to take into account that some images might have been digitally edited, and some cameras haven better lenses attached than others.I would suggest using Flickr’s functionality, to research any camera model you are interested in purchasing.

Conclusion:

This debate is as problematic as the Audio vs. BMW vs. Mercedes debate. There are just too many different factors which don’t allow for a specific conclusion.

What I like to leave you readers with is this:

Nikon and Canon or both excellent manufacturers of camera equipment – neither have such definitive strong / weak points to deduce either superior or inferior.

The best thing you can do as a consumer is to go to a shop, and look at the equipment you are interested purchasing. Compare what you like with other models and get what you think feels right.

Choosing between Nikon and Canon is in fact a purely personal preference!