Nikon vs Canon – the quest for the perfect SLR
For quite some time now I have been reading up on the current SLR situation. Being frustrated with the limitations of my small
Canon IXUS – I want a SLR again! …a new digital one of course. When Nikon revealed the D200 my first reaction was – that’s my new camera!!! …but is it?
Reading through all theses reviews was quite disappointing …for a couple of reasons.
Noise and the other noise
I know what I like – and what I dislike. I like low light shooting. I dislike using a flash. Now there have been some reviews comparing low light shots of the Nikon D200 and the
Canon 30D. You can easily spot it. Bummer! The Canon performs much better in that respect. So back to the research …more reviews, more opinions and – more noise. This time in
terms of information. It’s amazing how enthusiastic and biased …well, religious people can be when it comes down to picking either – Canon or Nikon. This leads to so
many useless comments out there that finding valuable information becomes an daunting quest. Especially when you hear people from both “parties” stating the same – just
for the other vendor: “[Canon|Nikon] does the better lenses!” Is the Canon stabilizer technology really better?
Even worse you sometimes get completely contradictory information. Now is the battery life for the D200 good or not? Some people claim it just takes some time for the battery to get
trained …and then it is actually quite good! …but (at least) as many people say it doesn’t last long. Even opinions in magazines seem not to be consistent.
Nothing is perfect
Is it really that hard? Why can’t they build what I (and probably many others) would prefer. Sometimes I think they do this so they have something left to improve …for the upsale. And this is not at all just tied to SLRs – this very well applies to mobiles and even software! But let’s dream for a moment. So my SLR would look like this little mockup. Let’s call it Nicanon D230:
- The solid body like the D200, a few buttons can go as it has the wheel of the Canon.
- What is optional and only externally available at the moment will be integrated directly into the camera – a GPS receiver for geo tagging the photos.
- It has the autofocus mode selector as an individual switch like the D200.
- The menu structure of the D200.
- The full size sensor of the Canon 5D,
- so also a big viewfinder like my analog SLR had.
- I also prefer the speed/appature display of the Nikon
- but like the highlighted autofocus points in the Canon viewfinder
- The speed of the 30D.
- The battery monitoring of D200.
- No crappy presets like everything below the Canon 5D/Nikon D200! I want to define them.
- Well, and from some other vendor I would steel^^^borrow the in-body picture stabilizer that even removes dust from the sensor.
- Not sure what lenses should fit onto it just yet, but…
- the price of the Canon 350D would be nice :-D
A bit realistically the Canon 5D would probably be what would suite me most. But I am way too much of a rusty amature to spend that amount of money on a camera body. Especially as one should rather spend more money on the glas instead.
What to do …what to do?