- Canon came out with Image Stabilization lenses first and had a 3 to 4 year head start on Nikon. (Arguably, Nikon invented VR Vibration Reduction first but they didn't beat Canon to market by making professional lenses immediately.) This started the mass exodus of professionals to Canon and caused the "sea of white lenses" you see at every sports event.[1]
- Canon bet on in-house CMOS technology for sensors instead of Nikon's strategy of partnering with Sony (and Kodak). Canon iterated faster on their digital cameras. In 2002, Canon had a very well-received 1ds full-frame digital while Nikon only offered a body for Kodak's horrible Dcs Pro 14n. Nikon didn't have their own full-frame camera until 2007. In technology races, 5 years is an eternity. Although the most expensive camera is never the best-selling product, any leadership position in the top-of-the-line camera can be leveraged and its features can trickle down to the cheaper mass-market cameras.
- Canon was the bigger company with other profitable product domains outside of cameras such as photocopiers, video camcorders, printers, etc. (E.g. Canon made the imaging engine for both Apple LaserWriter and HP LaserJet.) This allowed them to plow more capital and investments back into the camera division. Nikon also some other domains such as scientific microscopes and film scanners but they were less profitable.
In the film days, Nikon definitely had the perception of being the "Ferrari" of cameras but the shift to digital allowed Canon to take the lead.
- Canon was first to market with an affordable DSLR. Nikon may have had the first mainstream pro model (the D1), but Canon was first to the prosumer market with the D30. With everyone soon transitioning to digital, this would prove to be a key market (and soon dominated by Canon's 5D series).
- Canon was also first to strike big with a competent video DSLR, the 5D MkII. This would spawn a whole new market for video professionals and people getting into video, with Nikon playing catch up (even today still, Canon's AF for video is unmatched).
> Canon came out with Image Stabilization lenses first and had a 3 to 4 year head start on Nikon. (Arguably, Nikon invented VR Vibration Reduction first but they didn't beat Canon to market by making professional lenses immediately.) This started the mass exodus of professionals to Canon and caused the "sea of white lenses" you see at every sports event.
Actually it goes back to before optical stabilization. Nikon was first to market with auto focus (F3AF) but that was pretty clunky and only two compatible AF lenses were manufactured. By the time its successor, the F4, was released Nikon was competing with Canon's EOS-1.
Canon and Nikon took very different approaches. Canon used a brand new lens mount with high torque motors in the lenses. Nikon abandoned in-lens motors and went for in-body motors and reused the existing F mount. There were (and still are) pros and cons to the different approaches, but at the end of the day the EOS-1's autofocus was better for birding and sports than the F4's. That's when you saw pros start to abandon Nikon en masse. Image stabilization and digital were just insult to injury.
I think the biggest thing hobbling Nikon is the way they design and build their their products. The guy that runs lensrentals.com tests and disassembles lenses and blogs about it. Canon tends to use modular, easier to repair (and presumably easier to assemble in a factory with precision) components. Nikon's stuff still looks almost handmade and far more finicky.
Today, though, Canon has shifted from innovation to rent-extraction.
They aren't pushing features like video to their consumer lineups very aggressively, because they don't want to cannibalize the sales of their cine lineup (where a $50k body is almost entry-level). At one point, a lot of the innovation was happening via the Magic Lantern project, which is an open-sourced firmware replacement emerging from the community, and it seemed that Canon was (understandably) not really interested in helping.
In that classic echo of Canon moving into the electronic/autofocus niche that Nikon left underserved, Sony was perfectly happy to move into the video niche that Canon left underserved. Sony's MILCs started as niche products, but they've gotten better and better, their consumer cameras are 99% as good as Canon/Nikon's best but a fraction of the price, and their flagship stuff is just off the charts.
About 5 years back, Sony added on-sensor phase-detect pixels, which have put them into contention with DSLR-class products, if not actually better. For stills, they perform virtually on par with in-prism phase-detect sensors. They are much better than contrast-detect AF. For video, they can actually autofocus while shooting, which a DSLR cannot do (if the mirror is up, no light can get to the sensors in the prism to focus) and DSLRs must fall back to contrast-detect, which is quite slow.
On top of that, it's quite a bit cheaper to ditch the mirror box and viewfinder (or go electronic), and it lets you build a much smaller camera. DSLRs are fundamentally limited by their register distance (sensor-to-mount distance), MILC has no mirror so the register distance can be much smaller.
Canon's MILC products are hot garbage, they tried a token product a couple years ago but they were timid to avoid cannibalizing their DSLR and video lineups. So it was a terrible product, combining the worst characteristics of every system on the market. Small sensor, terrible AF, late to market, tiny selection of lenses. I haven't been following too closely but maybe they will make a more serious attempt next time. For the time being though, they have effectively ceded a niche that is growing in importance.
To put it in a nutshell, MILCs are now "Good Enough", and Canon has missed the boat. SLRs have inertia but they won't forever, there are really only a handful of places where they have a legitimate advantage, and those are fading quickly. Meanwhile, they are more expensive than MILCs for an equivalent amount of capability.
As for sensors, Canon may have iterated faster earlier, but they haven't kept up lately. Sony's sensors are flat-out better: higher-resolution, better high-ISO performance, PDAF pixels, etc. Nikon's products are actually technically superior to Canon's at this point, because they're using Sony sensors and Canon insists on using their own in-house slop.
Sony, meanwhile, has slapped their sensor on a shake table and now has in-body IS/VR like Pentax (which admittedly is not as good as in-lens VR, but you can always disable in-body VR if your lens supports in-lens VR). And their high-ISO stuff is just godly, we're talking about shooting at ISO 102k or 204k and getting a pretty decent image/video out of it.
It's that classic story of a company that becomes too entrenched in its existing revenue streams and can no longer innovate out of fear of cutting its own throat... and then another company goes ahead and does it anyway, and the slumbering giant has no response prepared. Just like when Nikon let Canon take a foothold.
(edit: looks like Canon released a new MILC a month ago that is at least a reasonable effort, although it has some quirks, really lacks any unique/compelling features, and is about 5 years late to the party)
Yes. I should not have left out image stabilization which would have been even more beneficial to film :-)
Also a great point about R&D budget during the digital transition. Canon definitely was going "in house" for digital whereas Nikon viewed digital almost as Kodak did--a different film back.
And both seem to be completely missing the smartphone revolution.
I think it would be great to see some Canon or Nikon tech in smartphone cameras, but they should've tried to do it like 5 years ago. I'm not even sure they'd have that much to offer smartphone makers at this point, for the same reason Intel wouldn't have too much to offer to Qualcomm in the smartphone market at this point - these companies already have all the expertise and experience they need in the markets they already dominate.
Smartphones have already almost completely wiped out the compact camera and "amateur" market for DSLRs. The predominance of ML accelerators in smartphones and new innovations (like using multiple cameras, or light-field tech, which Google may still use in future Pixels) is going to take smartphone cameras to the next level in the next 10 years.
One thing about Nikon is that they've always used a more advanced process technology in its same generation camera compared to Canon. If Canon used .5um, Nikon would use .35um, for example. This always helped with the ISO sensitivity & dynamic range of Nikon's sensors, which were always less noisy than Canon's. The Nikon D3 changed everything, for example, by allowing impossible shots at sensitivities previously unheard of.
Can I just say that what I really want is a mirrorless that is shaped more like a pistol than a traditional camera?
I have a 5DSR and a bunch of lenses, and don’t get me wrong, it is a fantastic camera...but, innovation in the form factor of cameras would be a welcome change. The existing industrial design is overly informed by the constraints of a roll of film, but, is not either the most ergonomic or the most stable position to hold a camera. We could do much better if we’d give it up.
Small size mirrorless bodies really show what’s wrong with the current style, too. They’re difficult to hold on to, and the buttons are virtually all dual purpose. At least the 5D has a nice grip, but with any kind of telephoto it becomes pretty awkward to stabilize.
Finally, with a “pistol format” camera, you can extend the viewfinder back from the lens, which can let you keep the existing big lenses and sensors but make an overall smaller package (the components move into the grip). This shallow sensor-lens depth is the main impediment to putting full frame glass and sensors into the standard small size mirrorless bodies. As has been cited elsewhere in this thread, smaller glass with higher density sensors is not a long term solution. Big glass does have a lot of advantages for high end photographs.
In my eyes, over the decades both companies kept leapfrogging over each other. With the T90, Canon probably made the most advanced non-AF SLR, only to abandon the FD-mount. This was a very costy change, which paid of later on, as it allowed Canon to start over without any legacy. Early on, Nikon had the lead in DSLRs, but Canon was the first with a 35mm DSLR. Nikon took a long time to go 35mm, but the D800 and D810 was a big step ahead with its 36mp sensor, only very recently Canon exceeded that with ther 50mp version of the 5D.
The next important step for both companies will be the transition to mirrorless technology. As µFT and the Sony A7/A9 are showing, mirrorless is the next step in camera technology. It will be interesting to watch how Canon and Nikon approach this transition. As both companies currently make their money with SLRs, it is a risky step, but an inevitable one. If one of them missteps in that transition, it means at least a big set back if not a complete loss of their role in the camera market.
Yeah, Sony is proving to be dangerous. Awesome sensor tech, and lenses that can compete with the high-end of Canon/Nikon's ranges (and Tamron is getting there too), at a point where lens quality really matters if you want to be able to use the pixel density.
For those of us who are only half paying attention, why is mirrorless an inevitable step?
I would have said that the advantage in sensor size of 35mm DSLRs would give them a long-lasting advantage over anything with a smaller sensor, even with advances in that technology.
In the Four Thirds, later Micro Four Thirds, world, Olympus and Panasonic played out some of the familiar tropes between these two corporations -- except they (Oly & Pana) had already agreed on the sensor size and lens mount electronics... so it was much less risky or painful to commit to one over the other.
In general terms, Panasonic had the better motion video features, Olympus had the better stills, but it was / is pretty fuzzy, and a closely matched feature set.
One of my top five favourite blog posts ever is an impassioned rant [1] about digital Full Frame sensors, originally published in 2008 before they became generally affordable (but while they were still very much a fantasy for many photographers who didn't really understand why they wanted one). Updated over the years, and still worth the read.
As someone entering the field without a large collection of (by contemporary standards) poorly designed, overweight, ill-suited lenses -- it was a less complex decision to identify the path that most closely resembled an open standard.
There is a sales and marketing side to this story as well. Switching costs in photography are quite high if you are invested in a system. Changing systems means selling every lens you own at a greatly depreciated price and purchasing new equivalents at full price. Canon wanted the pro sports market and Nikon was deeply entrenched. 300mm, 400mm, and 600mm lenses that are der rigeur for the sports pro (plus a few others like the 70-200mm) are far more expensive than camera bodies. Canon heavily subsidized the switching costs for key influential pros to get the ball rolling. These incentives were strategically timed to coincide with some of the innovations mentioned in the article. Had they not primed the pump and switched all there big teles to putty gray the battle would have been much tougher.
As far as the Nikon vs Canon thing, I remember a Helmut Newton documentary where a tourist hands him an instamatic camera to take a picture of the tourist with the model. Newton obliges and they show the finished shot. Which looks exactly like a Helmut Newton. It's not the hardware....
I'm not sure how true this now, but a few years ago the idea was that in general Canon had the edge (and it does have the marketshare) but Nikon was better at low-light, non sports, and had somewhat better quality for the price, whereas Canon was better as sports, video, and had a larger range of lenses. This is why I chose a Nikon D7000 about 7 years ago. If I knew what I knew about my preferences now, back then, I would have gone with something lighter and smaller, like a Pentax or Olympus.
If I were to choose today, I'd go with a Sony mirrorless instead since that seems to be where the market is going and Canon/Nikon are slow to catch up to mirrorless cameras. The nicer Sony A series mirrorless cameras are perfect for my use cases (I don't do sports, and generally like low light or underexposing my photos, I'd like to have full frame, and I really prefer something light), whereas fitting these criteria is difficult/not possible with Canon or Nikon, primarily the competing lightness and full frame aspects.
Ease of use is what hooked me in the early 2000s with the Rebel, so I stayed with it during the switch to digital SLR a few years later.
It's interesting that while autofocus is what captured a lot of the market, Canon's current manual-focus lenses are what keep me firmly locked in.
Their TS-E line (tilt/shift) can't autofocus, yet is everything I want and more from photography. They iterate more and have more to offer than Nikon's equivalent lens line, PC-E (perspective control).
I use my phone to take pictures more often than my DSLR, but "DSLR equivalent" or "DSLR quality" are just silly phrases for a phone until they can shift the focal plane or have super telephoto ability.
This is mostly unrelated, but I've had a longstanding question about the camera industry and maybe someone here will know the answer. Why do we keep investing in DSLR technology when mirrorless is obviously superior? Is it just a matter of professional photographers being hung up on old technology?
There's a few reasons, but they're all becoming irrelevant. I'm going to focus on Sony as the exemplar mirrorless player because I'm most familiar with them.
Mostly, it's because mirrorless lenses were garbage compared to Canon/Nikon until recently. This is the biggest reason. Sony in in particular has been very aggressive in addressing this issue by releasing native lenses which compete with Canon/Nikon in terms of price and performance at the high end. This wasn't an innovation problem, this was just a matter of Sony catching up to the leading players. When they did this, 3rd party players like Tamron and Sigma responded by producing more mirrorless lenses as the market size grew.
Next was brand value and inertia. Despite those, Sony has gone from a prosumer toy to a serious consideration in the pro space over just a few years. I don't think this shift could have happened much sooner.
Finally, and this only applies to Canon, it's the firmware. Through a series of happy accidents, Cannon cameras ended up with a completely open sourced firmware package called Magic Lantern which unlocks functionality not found in any other cameras - functionality that enables some types of photography that simply weren't accessible without 6 figure budgets before. This hasn't happened in the mirrorless space, so there's a segment of Canon users who are ready to make the jump to Sony but are held back by its comparatively limited stock firmware.
Also, there is one limiting factor on mirrorless cameras that takes away their main advantage at the high end. Professional grade lenses are big and heavy, and mirrorless cameras do nothing to remedy that. It's just a physical limitation of optical systems, the performance of the lens is ultimately dictated by the diameter of the elements. So if you're a pro photographer with his 85mm/f1.4 or 70-200/f2.8 lens, the size of that lens isn't going to change, and it completely dominates the size of the camera body. This takes away one of the main advantages of mirrorless technology in the pro space.
> DSLR technology when mirrorless is obviously superior
There is no tech superior to another. Mirrorless requires extensive battery usage for previewing your pictures. A DSLR can take thousands of pictures continuously. That's why the Sony Mirrorless 35mm digital cameras have a some kind of weakness: their autonomy on a single charge is about 300-400 pictures. An equivalent Canon or Nikon DSLR can take easily 1500 pictures on a single charge.
Because at the current time, mirrorless isn't entirely "obviously superior". It's been rapidly improving and gaining market share (for good reasons), but there's valid reasons to still have DSLRs too.
Also, parts of the market aren't buying "a camera", they bought into an ecosystem that's more than just camera tech. Someone in the Nikon or Canon ecosystem (the two only(?) important players that primarily do DSLRs) will stick with that even if they don't do mirrorless versions of their high-end cameras.
Mostly yes, people are locked into their brand through the lens mount and it's pretty expensive to switch. In some ways mirrorless hasn't been considered as good as SLR, with focusing and battery life, though this has been improved a lot recently. Some others still talk about weather sealing, which Sony seems to be lacking - but this is not a inherent flaw in mirrorless systems, but a choice by Sony.
If Canon and Nikon start making full-frame mirrorless cameras, I think we'll start to see a switch, especially if they neglect their SLR bodies and lenses.
I could see silent shooting becoming a requirement in press & some sports, which would essentially accelerate a change to mirrorless in the pro market. Video is another driver for mirrorless, since it can't use the mirror anyway (except in SLT cameras).
A lot of it is due to lenses. Lenses contribute at least as much to image quality as camera bodies. Pros will often have tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in lenses, and glass doesn't go obsolete. But SLR lenses are only compatible with other SLRs with the same mount. So switching to mirrorless isn't just a matter of buying a Sony body instead of a Canon body the next time you want to upgrade. It's also a matter of replacing thousands and thousands of dollars of glass (and that's assuming there are equivalent replacements, which isn't always the case).
One reason is that with a mirrorless camera you have to have the sensor powered all the time. That means background heat in the sensor which traditionally been a source of noise. With a DSLR you only have to have the sensor on to capture your final image.
That seems to be less of a problem with modern sensors so it may become a non-issue as time goes by.
>Why do we keep investing in DSLR technology when mirrorless is obviously superior?
Are they superior for the same price?
I care very much for low light and high ISO performance. I get darn good performance with my Pentax ($500-1000 body). When I checked 2 years ago, the only mirrorless cameras that came close cost over $2000.
Part of it is development priorities. You can't launch a brand new system and hope to immediately take on the whole existing DSLR ecosystem, so mirrorless started out inhabiting the niches that weren't so well served by DSLRs, because within those niches (at least) some people will be willing to overlook the shortcomings. And then you can build on that, and produce newer models with fewer shortcomings, and maybe start to capture a bigger market.
When digital became a reality, it also took plenty time to displace film. When I bought my first digital camera (a Canon D30), it had many drawbacks compared to the top-of-the-line 35mm film cameras of the time. A measly 3 MP resolution, a confusing crop factor (b/c the sensor wasn't truly 35mm), not great battery life, limited low-light performance. Yet it was clear digital was the future.
Sony and Fuji are making great strides, but Canon and Nikon have had decades to perfect their systems. And while mirrorless manufacturers are investing very heavily, Canon and Nikon have really only been putting out fairly iterative updates (especially Canon).
Professional photographers often have $10k+ invested in lenses so switching systems isn't something they'd be likely to do for an incremental upgrade. Some have switched to the Sony A9 though.
For me personally I had nowhere near that much money invested in Canon glass, so switching to Sony wasn't as painful (I pre-ordered the Sony A7iii but haven't received it yet).
Given that the $2000 Sony is out-reviewing the $3500 Canon 5D markIV, it's getting a lot of attention and I'm hardly the only one jumping ship. I think it's safe to assume that Canon/Nikon will respond with pro level mirrorless cameras as soon as they're able to.
imo Canon created and then heavy push into a digital prosumer market. The Canon 300D Kit was priced perfectly to capture mid-market, many in that mid-market went on to become the pro market. My college cohort was the first through the newly created “Digital Imaging and Technology” program(at art school in canada), by the time we graduated (2006), most people had switched to Canon because the CA / Lens Sharpness / AF became demonstratively better. From there it was a natural path to follow 30D > 5D > 5DmkII. Additionally, the Canon prime lineup at the time was fantastic.
As a camera nerd owner of many of the cameras mentioned in the article: Canon F-1, New F-1; Nikon F, F2, and F3, plus some Canon EOS cameras, I can plainly say this article is ill-researched and downright silly in places. It thoroughly ignores a big part of the Canon-Nikon war, which started even before the Nikon F was introduced(1959), and attributes -like a fanboy- inventions like "electronic metering" or "Autofocus" to Nikon, where the truth is that neither Nikon nor Canon were involved in inventing such stuff.
Comparing the F-1 to the Nikon F by comparing pictures of how big the system looks? That's the most idiotic camera comparison i've ever seen!!
The story of Canon vs Nikon is very long, starts in the mid-50s, and in truth is a three-actors story: It is really the story of Asahi Optical (Pentax) vs Nikon vs Canon. For Canon was the direct competition to Nikon in the rangefinder era (1950s-early 1960s), and Nikon was direct competition to the established Pentax in the SLR era. For most of the early 60s, photojournalists either preferred the Nikon F (the "system") or the Pentax (spotmatic and early models).
Basically, Nikon(Nippon Kogaku) was an optical manufacturer and Canon was a small shop which did the big feat of building the first japanese 35mm camera. So this first camera was first sold with Nikon lenses, since Canon(Kwanon) didn't manufacture lenses.
Then, all through the 50s, Nikon brought a series of very sophisticated rangefinder cameras (& lenses) and Canon brought some very high quality rangefinder lenses. The two rangefinder systems were already competing (!)
Canon, in the early 60s, considered rangefinders the better system and didn't think SLR cameras were to be strong competition, that's why in 1959 they released a half-baked effort at a SLR, the Canonflex, just to have something to show off when the Nikon F was released. The Canonflex wasn't even released with a wide angle lens, which shows how little commitment Canon had to SLR cameras.
Meanwhile in the early 60s, Asahi Optical (Pentax) already had very refined SLR cameras and a whole array of SLR lenses. The first japanese wideangle lens for a SLR was released by Asahi, not Canon nor Nikon.
The Nikon F was the first japanese SLR "system" camera and this head-start made them get more customers than any competitor (save Pentax). The 1971 Canon F-1 camera was the culmination of an attempt that started by Canon in the mid-60s to create a SLR that competed frontally with Nikon. This attempt started first by Canon massively increasing the R&D in camera lenses, culminating in a series of many "firsts" in japanese optics (during the 1965-71 period). Part of this long-term strategy was creating lenses of state-of-the-art performance, which often beat the (then current) Nikkor lenses at magazine reviews. An example is the Canon FL 19/3.5R (1965) which was thoroughly superior to the Nikon offering, another example was the FL-F fluorite telephoto lenses (1968). Another example was the FL 55/1.2 aspheric, the first production standard lens with aspheric surfaces. This was obviously a preparation for the release of the F-1 camera.
The F-1 camera was thoroughly superior to the Nikon F and a formidable rival of the (introduced in 1971 as well) Nikon F2. It got accepted and used by professionals, however Nikon had entered that market first. Even today the high value of the F-1 in the used market is an indication of the esteem this camera is held by the collectors.
The New F-1 camera (1981) was the direct competitor of the Nikon F3 as well, but that's another story!!
I'm supposing that this comes up in the context of people complaining about Apple. It's interesting to see an example of a company which basically chained itself to backwards compatibility and a sort of focus-group dedication to what "pro" users wanted, and ended up losing the "pro" market as a result (to a company that willfully broke compatibility and developed something nobody seemed to be asking for).
Part of the problem for Nikon was that their old lenses were built to last forever, so they did. I just got a new Nikon DSLR, and I've had Nikons since the 1970s. So The fact that I can grab my AI-S lenses (but sadly not the even older pre-AI lenses) and go out and shoot is cool. And I've never felt drawn to Canon. A while ago I did acquire a Hasselblad, but that's a different story entirely.
I've wondered for a while if we worry too much about backwards compatibility, it must be a huge burden for companies like Microsoft to deal with. Meanwhile Apple seems to almost relish breaking old API's with each new release of macOS and it doesn't seem to hurt them.
The history of Nikon vs. Canon reminds me of the following stories.
* In the "System Compatibility" section, this talks about how Canon threw out backward compatibility in 1987 (to the chagrin of existing customers), but gained an all-electronic lens mount that eased future expansion and achieved better compatibility in the long run: https://kenrockwell.com/tech/nikon-vs-canon.htm#comp
My dad always shot Nikon (until recently when he picked up a smaller Fuji thing), but I personally have always preferred Canon for two reasons:
1: Variety of lenses. When I was into photography ~10 years ago, you could buy 4 different Canon 70-200mm lenses; an F4, F4 w/ image stabilisation, an F2.8, and an F2.8 w/image stabilisation. This meant that they had a great bit of glass within multiple different price ranges, and it made it much easier to get into their ecosystem.
2: The menu system on Canon cameras is really logical, for me. Nikon menus have always confused the hell out of me.
It’s astounding to me how bad the menu systems are for most cameras. It’s a common negative quality I see in reviews for Nikon, Sony. Samsung, Olympus, and Panasonic. I haven’t read any Canon reviews so I’ll have to take your word for it that they’re an outlier.
Does Canon do the "U" modes like some Nikon cameras?
I know people give Ken Rockwell a lot of shit, and often with reason, but he's so so right that those are a game changer. I don't have to think, I can just move to "U1" or "U2" for my most common shooting scenarios and I'm done. There's also the customizable "Fn" button that gives quick access to a custom menu. Nikon cameras that feature this have easily the best UI in the industry.
I agree with those two reasons, and add a third: I've got smallish hands for a man, and the canon-bodies always felt better suited to me for that reason.
Its kinda like battling about who's best as the whole boat sinks. Its rare to see a compact camera these days and SLRs are slowly disappearing too. I know I've stopped using mine. There will always be pros and some enthusiasts, but I can only see pain for these companies Canon & Nikon will probably limp along but Pentax, Ricoh, Olympus, Fuji will end up like Kodak.
What change? Canon or Nikon’s DSLR’s have been dropping due to a lack o “breakthroughs” in the industry. If they made a camera with a “smart” setting that adapts to the current conditions, make it easy to use, make it easy to sync with smartphones, and price it at 400-500 dollars, it could be a must-have for Instagram addicts.
The SL2 is almost exactly that (a little out of your suggested price range with a kit lens, but it's a better camera than most people need for Instagram and the like), if a DSLR is even the right choice for that demographic. Every manufacturer has something in that ~$500-$700 range that is similarly competent; I only mention the Canon SL2 because it is the most effective when it comes to being "smart" (the new autofocus system in Canon cameras is by far the best in the market; it's frighteningly good, and much faster than a human operator could be). But, 1080p (or 4k) video, good automatic settings, etc. are all pretty standard across the board from every manufacturer. It's hard to find a camera from a good manufacturer that doesn't work great.
But, there are also cameras in your suggested price range that aren't DSLRs that fit the bill, probably better than a DSLR for the casual camera user. A lot of the smart tech in DSLR cameras has trickled down into point and shoot cameras, including good autofocus, white balance, etc. Lens technology has moved more slowly, but the digital part of cameras has been advancing extremely rapidly.
Many cameras do now have the ability to sync with a smartphone over Bluetooth or WiFi, it's just unrefined and drains battery life. My camera, the Olympus OM-D E-M5 II, can do this with nothing more than an app install on Android/iOS. The battery drain is problematic, though, and it doesn't work unless you shoot in JPG or RAW+JPG! That's right, it won't auto-convert images on the fly just when requested. Since I shoot RAW only for higher burst performance, that means that I don't use this photo, and wait until I get home before posting anything.
[+] [-] jasode|8 years ago|reply
- Canon came out with Image Stabilization lenses first and had a 3 to 4 year head start on Nikon. (Arguably, Nikon invented VR Vibration Reduction first but they didn't beat Canon to market by making professional lenses immediately.) This started the mass exodus of professionals to Canon and caused the "sea of white lenses" you see at every sports event.[1]
- Canon bet on in-house CMOS technology for sensors instead of Nikon's strategy of partnering with Sony (and Kodak). Canon iterated faster on their digital cameras. In 2002, Canon had a very well-received 1ds full-frame digital while Nikon only offered a body for Kodak's horrible Dcs Pro 14n. Nikon didn't have their own full-frame camera until 2007. In technology races, 5 years is an eternity. Although the most expensive camera is never the best-selling product, any leadership position in the top-of-the-line camera can be leveraged and its features can trickle down to the cheaper mass-market cameras.
- Canon was the bigger company with other profitable product domains outside of cameras such as photocopiers, video camcorders, printers, etc. (E.g. Canon made the imaging engine for both Apple LaserWriter and HP LaserJet.) This allowed them to plow more capital and investments back into the camera division. Nikon also some other domains such as scientific microscopes and film scanners but they were less profitable.
In the film days, Nikon definitely had the perception of being the "Ferrari" of cameras but the shift to digital allowed Canon to take the lead.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q="telephoto+lenses"+sports+ev...
[+] [-] jd20|8 years ago|reply
- Canon was first to market with an affordable DSLR. Nikon may have had the first mainstream pro model (the D1), but Canon was first to the prosumer market with the D30. With everyone soon transitioning to digital, this would prove to be a key market (and soon dominated by Canon's 5D series).
- Canon was also first to strike big with a competent video DSLR, the 5D MkII. This would spawn a whole new market for video professionals and people getting into video, with Nikon playing catch up (even today still, Canon's AF for video is unmatched).
[+] [-] inferiorhuman|8 years ago|reply
Actually it goes back to before optical stabilization. Nikon was first to market with auto focus (F3AF) but that was pretty clunky and only two compatible AF lenses were manufactured. By the time its successor, the F4, was released Nikon was competing with Canon's EOS-1.
Canon and Nikon took very different approaches. Canon used a brand new lens mount with high torque motors in the lenses. Nikon abandoned in-lens motors and went for in-body motors and reused the existing F mount. There were (and still are) pros and cons to the different approaches, but at the end of the day the EOS-1's autofocus was better for birding and sports than the F4's. That's when you saw pros start to abandon Nikon en masse. Image stabilization and digital were just insult to injury.
I think the biggest thing hobbling Nikon is the way they design and build their their products. The guy that runs lensrentals.com tests and disassembles lenses and blogs about it. Canon tends to use modular, easier to repair (and presumably easier to assemble in a factory with precision) components. Nikon's stuff still looks almost handmade and far more finicky.
[+] [-] paulmd|8 years ago|reply
They aren't pushing features like video to their consumer lineups very aggressively, because they don't want to cannibalize the sales of their cine lineup (where a $50k body is almost entry-level). At one point, a lot of the innovation was happening via the Magic Lantern project, which is an open-sourced firmware replacement emerging from the community, and it seemed that Canon was (understandably) not really interested in helping.
In that classic echo of Canon moving into the electronic/autofocus niche that Nikon left underserved, Sony was perfectly happy to move into the video niche that Canon left underserved. Sony's MILCs started as niche products, but they've gotten better and better, their consumer cameras are 99% as good as Canon/Nikon's best but a fraction of the price, and their flagship stuff is just off the charts.
About 5 years back, Sony added on-sensor phase-detect pixels, which have put them into contention with DSLR-class products, if not actually better. For stills, they perform virtually on par with in-prism phase-detect sensors. They are much better than contrast-detect AF. For video, they can actually autofocus while shooting, which a DSLR cannot do (if the mirror is up, no light can get to the sensors in the prism to focus) and DSLRs must fall back to contrast-detect, which is quite slow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up8K_xd_iwU&t=628
On top of that, it's quite a bit cheaper to ditch the mirror box and viewfinder (or go electronic), and it lets you build a much smaller camera. DSLRs are fundamentally limited by their register distance (sensor-to-mount distance), MILC has no mirror so the register distance can be much smaller.
Canon's MILC products are hot garbage, they tried a token product a couple years ago but they were timid to avoid cannibalizing their DSLR and video lineups. So it was a terrible product, combining the worst characteristics of every system on the market. Small sensor, terrible AF, late to market, tiny selection of lenses. I haven't been following too closely but maybe they will make a more serious attempt next time. For the time being though, they have effectively ceded a niche that is growing in importance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO7rxitFLZg
To put it in a nutshell, MILCs are now "Good Enough", and Canon has missed the boat. SLRs have inertia but they won't forever, there are really only a handful of places where they have a legitimate advantage, and those are fading quickly. Meanwhile, they are more expensive than MILCs for an equivalent amount of capability.
As for sensors, Canon may have iterated faster earlier, but they haven't kept up lately. Sony's sensors are flat-out better: higher-resolution, better high-ISO performance, PDAF pixels, etc. Nikon's products are actually technically superior to Canon's at this point, because they're using Sony sensors and Canon insists on using their own in-house slop.
Sony, meanwhile, has slapped their sensor on a shake table and now has in-body IS/VR like Pentax (which admittedly is not as good as in-lens VR, but you can always disable in-body VR if your lens supports in-lens VR). And their high-ISO stuff is just godly, we're talking about shooting at ISO 102k or 204k and getting a pretty decent image/video out of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVLBHMbRMW4
It's that classic story of a company that becomes too entrenched in its existing revenue streams and can no longer innovate out of fear of cutting its own throat... and then another company goes ahead and does it anyway, and the slumbering giant has no response prepared. Just like when Nikon let Canon take a foothold.
(edit: looks like Canon released a new MILC a month ago that is at least a reasonable effort, although it has some quirks, really lacks any unique/compelling features, and is about 5 years late to the party)
[+] [-] sinofsky|8 years ago|reply
Also a great point about R&D budget during the digital transition. Canon definitely was going "in house" for digital whereas Nikon viewed digital almost as Kodak did--a different film back.
[+] [-] mtgx|8 years ago|reply
I think it would be great to see some Canon or Nikon tech in smartphone cameras, but they should've tried to do it like 5 years ago. I'm not even sure they'd have that much to offer smartphone makers at this point, for the same reason Intel wouldn't have too much to offer to Qualcomm in the smartphone market at this point - these companies already have all the expertise and experience they need in the markets they already dominate.
Smartphones have already almost completely wiped out the compact camera and "amateur" market for DSLRs. The predominance of ML accelerators in smartphones and new innovations (like using multiple cameras, or light-field tech, which Google may still use in future Pixels) is going to take smartphone cameras to the next level in the next 10 years.
[+] [-] mozumder|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saiya-jin|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] dng88|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] abakker|8 years ago|reply
I have a 5DSR and a bunch of lenses, and don’t get me wrong, it is a fantastic camera...but, innovation in the form factor of cameras would be a welcome change. The existing industrial design is overly informed by the constraints of a roll of film, but, is not either the most ergonomic or the most stable position to hold a camera. We could do much better if we’d give it up.
Small size mirrorless bodies really show what’s wrong with the current style, too. They’re difficult to hold on to, and the buttons are virtually all dual purpose. At least the 5D has a nice grip, but with any kind of telephoto it becomes pretty awkward to stabilize.
Finally, with a “pistol format” camera, you can extend the viewfinder back from the lens, which can let you keep the existing big lenses and sensors but make an overall smaller package (the components move into the grip). This shallow sensor-lens depth is the main impediment to putting full frame glass and sensors into the standard small size mirrorless bodies. As has been cited elsewhere in this thread, smaller glass with higher density sensors is not a long term solution. Big glass does have a lot of advantages for high end photographs.
[+] [-] _ph_|8 years ago|reply
The next important step for both companies will be the transition to mirrorless technology. As µFT and the Sony A7/A9 are showing, mirrorless is the next step in camera technology. It will be interesting to watch how Canon and Nikon approach this transition. As both companies currently make their money with SLRs, it is a risky step, but an inevitable one. If one of them missteps in that transition, it means at least a big set back if not a complete loss of their role in the camera market.
[+] [-] detaro|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eslaught|8 years ago|reply
I would have said that the advantage in sensor size of 35mm DSLRs would give them a long-lasting advantage over anything with a smaller sensor, even with advances in that technology.
[+] [-] Jedd|8 years ago|reply
In general terms, Panasonic had the better motion video features, Olympus had the better stills, but it was / is pretty fuzzy, and a closely matched feature set.
One of my top five favourite blog posts ever is an impassioned rant [1] about digital Full Frame sensors, originally published in 2008 before they became generally affordable (but while they were still very much a fantasy for many photographers who didn't really understand why they wanted one). Updated over the years, and still worth the read.
As someone entering the field without a large collection of (by contemporary standards) poorly designed, overweight, ill-suited lenses -- it was a less complex decision to identify the path that most closely resembled an open standard.
[1] http://www.digitalsecrets.net/secrets/FullFrameWars.html
[+] [-] slr555|8 years ago|reply
As far as the Nikon vs Canon thing, I remember a Helmut Newton documentary where a tourist hands him an instamatic camera to take a picture of the tourist with the model. Newton obliges and they show the finished shot. Which looks exactly like a Helmut Newton. It's not the hardware....
[+] [-] yladiz|8 years ago|reply
If I were to choose today, I'd go with a Sony mirrorless instead since that seems to be where the market is going and Canon/Nikon are slow to catch up to mirrorless cameras. The nicer Sony A series mirrorless cameras are perfect for my use cases (I don't do sports, and generally like low light or underexposing my photos, I'd like to have full frame, and I really prefer something light), whereas fitting these criteria is difficult/not possible with Canon or Nikon, primarily the competing lightness and full frame aspects.
[+] [-] influxed|8 years ago|reply
It's interesting that while autofocus is what captured a lot of the market, Canon's current manual-focus lenses are what keep me firmly locked in.
Their TS-E line (tilt/shift) can't autofocus, yet is everything I want and more from photography. They iterate more and have more to offer than Nikon's equivalent lens line, PC-E (perspective control).
I use my phone to take pictures more often than my DSLR, but "DSLR equivalent" or "DSLR quality" are just silly phrases for a phone until they can shift the focal plane or have super telephoto ability.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_control
[+] [-] shawnz|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] random4369|8 years ago|reply
Mostly, it's because mirrorless lenses were garbage compared to Canon/Nikon until recently. This is the biggest reason. Sony in in particular has been very aggressive in addressing this issue by releasing native lenses which compete with Canon/Nikon in terms of price and performance at the high end. This wasn't an innovation problem, this was just a matter of Sony catching up to the leading players. When they did this, 3rd party players like Tamron and Sigma responded by producing more mirrorless lenses as the market size grew.
Next was brand value and inertia. Despite those, Sony has gone from a prosumer toy to a serious consideration in the pro space over just a few years. I don't think this shift could have happened much sooner.
Finally, and this only applies to Canon, it's the firmware. Through a series of happy accidents, Cannon cameras ended up with a completely open sourced firmware package called Magic Lantern which unlocks functionality not found in any other cameras - functionality that enables some types of photography that simply weren't accessible without 6 figure budgets before. This hasn't happened in the mirrorless space, so there's a segment of Canon users who are ready to make the jump to Sony but are held back by its comparatively limited stock firmware.
Also, there is one limiting factor on mirrorless cameras that takes away their main advantage at the high end. Professional grade lenses are big and heavy, and mirrorless cameras do nothing to remedy that. It's just a physical limitation of optical systems, the performance of the lens is ultimately dictated by the diameter of the elements. So if you're a pro photographer with his 85mm/f1.4 or 70-200/f2.8 lens, the size of that lens isn't going to change, and it completely dominates the size of the camera body. This takes away one of the main advantages of mirrorless technology in the pro space.
[+] [-] ekianjo|8 years ago|reply
There is no tech superior to another. Mirrorless requires extensive battery usage for previewing your pictures. A DSLR can take thousands of pictures continuously. That's why the Sony Mirrorless 35mm digital cameras have a some kind of weakness: their autonomy on a single charge is about 300-400 pictures. An equivalent Canon or Nikon DSLR can take easily 1500 pictures on a single charge.
[+] [-] detaro|8 years ago|reply
Also, parts of the market aren't buying "a camera", they bought into an ecosystem that's more than just camera tech. Someone in the Nikon or Canon ecosystem (the two only(?) important players that primarily do DSLRs) will stick with that even if they don't do mirrorless versions of their high-end cameras.
[+] [-] rythie|8 years ago|reply
If Canon and Nikon start making full-frame mirrorless cameras, I think we'll start to see a switch, especially if they neglect their SLR bodies and lenses.
I could see silent shooting becoming a requirement in press & some sports, which would essentially accelerate a change to mirrorless in the pro market. Video is another driver for mirrorless, since it can't use the mirror anyway (except in SLT cameras).
[+] [-] mi100hael|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Lio|8 years ago|reply
That seems to be less of a problem with modern sensors so it may become a non-issue as time goes by.
[+] [-] BeetleB|8 years ago|reply
Are they superior for the same price?
I care very much for low light and high ISO performance. I get darn good performance with my Pentax ($500-1000 body). When I checked 2 years ago, the only mirrorless cameras that came close cost over $2000.
[+] [-] radiowave|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rangibaby|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blattimwind|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jd20|8 years ago|reply
Sony and Fuji are making great strides, but Canon and Nikon have had decades to perfect their systems. And while mirrorless manufacturers are investing very heavily, Canon and Nikon have really only been putting out fairly iterative updates (especially Canon).
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] aczerepinski|8 years ago|reply
For me personally I had nowhere near that much money invested in Canon glass, so switching to Sony wasn't as painful (I pre-ordered the Sony A7iii but haven't received it yet).
Given that the $2000 Sony is out-reviewing the $3500 Canon 5D markIV, it's getting a lot of attention and I'm hardly the only one jumping ship. I think it's safe to assume that Canon/Nikon will respond with pro level mirrorless cameras as soon as they're able to.
[+] [-] petre|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neom|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flavio81|8 years ago|reply
Comparing the F-1 to the Nikon F by comparing pictures of how big the system looks? That's the most idiotic camera comparison i've ever seen!!
The story of Canon vs Nikon is very long, starts in the mid-50s, and in truth is a three-actors story: It is really the story of Asahi Optical (Pentax) vs Nikon vs Canon. For Canon was the direct competition to Nikon in the rangefinder era (1950s-early 1960s), and Nikon was direct competition to the established Pentax in the SLR era. For most of the early 60s, photojournalists either preferred the Nikon F (the "system") or the Pentax (spotmatic and early models).
Basically, Nikon(Nippon Kogaku) was an optical manufacturer and Canon was a small shop which did the big feat of building the first japanese 35mm camera. So this first camera was first sold with Nikon lenses, since Canon(Kwanon) didn't manufacture lenses.
Then, all through the 50s, Nikon brought a series of very sophisticated rangefinder cameras (& lenses) and Canon brought some very high quality rangefinder lenses. The two rangefinder systems were already competing (!)
Canon, in the early 60s, considered rangefinders the better system and didn't think SLR cameras were to be strong competition, that's why in 1959 they released a half-baked effort at a SLR, the Canonflex, just to have something to show off when the Nikon F was released. The Canonflex wasn't even released with a wide angle lens, which shows how little commitment Canon had to SLR cameras.
Meanwhile in the early 60s, Asahi Optical (Pentax) already had very refined SLR cameras and a whole array of SLR lenses. The first japanese wideangle lens for a SLR was released by Asahi, not Canon nor Nikon.
The Nikon F was the first japanese SLR "system" camera and this head-start made them get more customers than any competitor (save Pentax). The 1971 Canon F-1 camera was the culmination of an attempt that started by Canon in the mid-60s to create a SLR that competed frontally with Nikon. This attempt started first by Canon massively increasing the R&D in camera lenses, culminating in a series of many "firsts" in japanese optics (during the 1965-71 period). Part of this long-term strategy was creating lenses of state-of-the-art performance, which often beat the (then current) Nikkor lenses at magazine reviews. An example is the Canon FL 19/3.5R (1965) which was thoroughly superior to the Nikon offering, another example was the FL-F fluorite telephoto lenses (1968). Another example was the FL 55/1.2 aspheric, the first production standard lens with aspheric surfaces. This was obviously a preparation for the release of the F-1 camera.
The F-1 camera was thoroughly superior to the Nikon F and a formidable rival of the (introduced in 1971 as well) Nikon F2. It got accepted and used by professionals, however Nikon had entered that market first. Even today the high value of the F-1 in the used market is an indication of the esteem this camera is held by the collectors.
The New F-1 camera (1981) was the direct competitor of the Nikon F3 as well, but that's another story!!
[+] [-] anta40|8 years ago|reply
I've some old Canon film gears: a Canonet and Canon P. All of my film SLRs are Nikons and Minoltas.
Let me see this F-1 fellow :)
[+] [-] ubernostrum|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Finnucane|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tonyedgecombe|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nayuki|8 years ago|reply
* In the "System Compatibility" section, this talks about how Canon threw out backward compatibility in 1987 (to the chagrin of existing customers), but gained an all-electronic lens mount that eased future expansion and achieved better compatibility in the long run: https://kenrockwell.com/tech/nikon-vs-canon.htm#comp
* In the "Introduction" section, this talks about how autofocus was superior on the early Canon products than the early Nikon products: https://kenrockwell.com/tech/nikon-vs-canon.htm
* Nikon's insanely complicated matrix of body-lens compatibility: https://kenrockwell.com/nikon/compatibility-lens.htm . Whereas on Canon, simply "if it fits, it works".
[+] [-] robotmay|8 years ago|reply
1: Variety of lenses. When I was into photography ~10 years ago, you could buy 4 different Canon 70-200mm lenses; an F4, F4 w/ image stabilisation, an F2.8, and an F2.8 w/image stabilisation. This meant that they had a great bit of glass within multiple different price ranges, and it made it much easier to get into their ecosystem.
2: The menu system on Canon cameras is really logical, for me. Nikon menus have always confused the hell out of me.
[+] [-] wishinghand|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Obi_Juan_Kenobi|8 years ago|reply
I know people give Ken Rockwell a lot of shit, and often with reason, but he's so so right that those are a game changer. I don't have to think, I can just move to "U1" or "U2" for my most common shooting scenarios and I'm done. There's also the customizable "Fn" button that gives quick access to a custom menu. Nikon cameras that feature this have easily the best UI in the industry.
[+] [-] stevekemp|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] rb808|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FreekNortier|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FiveSquared|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SwellJoe|8 years ago|reply
But, there are also cameras in your suggested price range that aren't DSLRs that fit the bill, probably better than a DSLR for the casual camera user. A lot of the smart tech in DSLR cameras has trickled down into point and shoot cameras, including good autofocus, white balance, etc. Lens technology has moved more slowly, but the digital part of cameras has been advancing extremely rapidly.
[+] [-] CydeWeys|8 years ago|reply