Canon or Nikon — which camera is better?

Canon and Nikon are two giants in the mass mar­ket pho­tog­ra­phy indus­try. It is they who pro­duce the most SLR cam­eras, mir­ror­less cam­eras, “soap cam­eras”, “super­zooms” and oth­er, oth­er devices for cap­tur­ing the moment. They define the indus­try so much that even third-par­ty com­pa­nies seek to bring lens­es and oth­er acces­sories to the mar­ket, pri­mar­i­ly focused on use with solu­tions from these man­u­fac­tur­ers.

And, when you want to buy your first full-fledged cam­era, pro­fes­sion­al or at least semi-pro­fes­sion­al lev­el, you often have to choose between these two man­u­fac­tur­ers. Any Sony and Leica are not even con­sid­ered — because of the rar­i­ty or com­par­a­tive high cost.

In this arti­cle, we will not take part in mul­ti-year holi­vars on the top­ic “Canon or Nikon”. We will real­ly help you choose by com­par­ing usabil­i­ty, inter­face, num­ber of acces­sories and oth­er para­me­ters that deter­mine the so-called user expe­ri­ence. And, since both com­pa­nies pro­duce a huge amount of equip­ment, for com­par­i­son, we will take the lat­est mod­els of the mid­dle price seg­ment at the time of writ­ing this mate­r­i­al.

Canon cameras — and, in particular, the “SLR” Canon EOS 6D Mark II

A few years ago, Canon “caught the trend” to become pho­tog­ra­phers, blog­gers and oth­er cre­ative pro­fes­sion­als. And since then, the cam­eras of her author­ship began to be sim­pli­fied and receive a lot of auto­mat­ic func­tions. Essen­tial­ly, it start­ed mak­ing cam­eras with a “Make Well” but­ton.

This is most evi­dent in the Cre­ative Auto func­tion. The device inde­pen­dent­ly selects all the nec­es­sary shoot­ing para­me­ters based on the work­ing con­di­tions, objects in the frame and the scene, and the user only has to press the shut­ter but­ton. And there are just a lot of oper­at­ing modes in the cam­eras — and each of them with its own set­tings pre­sets.

Of course, pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phers can always switch to man­u­al mode and set every nec­es­sary shoot­ing para­me­ter there. White bal­ance, light sen­si­tiv­i­ty, focal length (if not on the lens) and oth­er func­tions. Thanks to this, you can real­ize your own artis­tic ideas, almost with­out resort­ing to graph­ic edi­tors like Adobe Pho­to­shop or GIMP.

For exam­ple, it is advis­able to con­sid­er the Canon EOS 6D Mark II, a full-frame SLR cam­era released in 2019 and aimed at the mid­dle price seg­ment (about 1200$ for the body pack­age with­out a lens at the time of writ­ing this mate­r­i­al). It is char­ac­ter­ized by:

1. Clas­sic opti­cal viewfind­er with 98% frame cov­er­age and 0.71x mag­ni­fi­ca­tion;

2. Full frame (35.9x24mm) 24MP sen­sor;

3. Brand­ed bay­o­net series EF;

4. 3‑inch touch screen with swiv­el design;

5. The abil­i­ty to shoot video in Full HD 60 fps;

6. Con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing speed of 6.5 frames per sec­ond;

7. Stock sen­si­tiv­i­ty ISO 100–40000.

8. 
   

9. The full-frame sen­sor allows you to set the cor­rect depth of field, which is espe­cial­ly impor­tant in por­trait pho­tog­ra­phy. And, as you know, most begin­ners are guid­ed pre­cise­ly by this area of ​​​​work. And no won­der, since pro­fes­sion­al stu­dio pho­tog­ra­phy is a way not only to reveal your own tal­ent and vision of beau­ty, but also an oppor­tu­ni­ty to earn extra mon­ey.

10. The cam­era is easy to man­age and set up. The choice of shoot­ing modes is still on a spe­cial disk, as it was almost 30 years ago, after the release of the com­pa­ny’s first dig­i­tal cam­era. Oper­at­ing para­me­ters are dis­played both on the liq­uid crys­tal dis­play and on a small LCD screen. Sep­a­rate­ly ren­dered a num­ber of but­tons for quick adjust­ment of cer­tain modes — aut­o­fo­cus, ISO, white bal­ance. In gen­er­al, every­thing is imple­ment­ed in such a way that even not very expe­ri­enced users have no prob­lems with work.

Advan­tages of Canon cam­eras:

1. Sim­ple, clear con­trol. From the mode dial and pre­sets to the “Do Good” but­ton in the form of Auto Cap­ture;

2. Advanced pro­fes­sion­al set­tings. Although, of course, some of them will have to be looked for, they are so deeply hid­den in the menu, but — they are, and this is the main thing;

3. Wide choice of lens­es. EF and Europe mounts are very pop­u­lar, so there will be no prob­lems with buy­ing optics. There are both inex­pen­sive and pre­mi­um options.

Dis­ad­van­tages of Canon cam­eras:

1. For some rea­son, the com­pa­ny lim­its video­g­ra­phers. Even in flag­ship mod­els, sup­port for shoot­ing in 4K 60fps res­o­lu­tion is absent or is extreme­ly rare;

2. Strange rela­tion­ship with opti­cal sta­bi­liza­tion sys­tems. Again, this fea­ture is not avail­able in all mod­ern cam­eras in the mid­dle and top price seg­ment, but it could be.

Canon is a good choice for begin­ners. And the top mod­els of the com­pa­ny will not dis­ap­point pro­fes­sion­als either. But sim­ple con­trols with a clear but­ton lay­out, plen­ty of auto­mat­ic modes, a large num­ber of sen­si­tive points for aut­o­fo­cus and oth­er automa­tion make Canon cam­eras an excel­lent solu­tion for those who do not want to spend months learn­ing the the­o­ret­i­cal foun­da­tions of pho­tog­ra­phy and optics.

Nikon cameras — and in particular the Nikon D750

Nikon over the past few years has focused on imple­ment­ing the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy in its prod­ucts. For exam­ple, the flag­ship cam­era of 2019, the Z7, comes with an impres­sive 46-megapix­el image sen­sor. Full frame, of course. Thanks to this, real­ly detailed, impres­sive and emo­tion­al pic­tures are obtained. Which are still then processed in Pho­to­shop.

Nikon cam­eras are aimed at peo­ple who have already held a cam­era in their hands and are not afraid of the words “man­u­al expo­sure”. Of course, auto­mat­ic modes are also present in them, and there is also a “Do Well” but­ton in one form or anoth­er. But still, it is bet­ter to have at least some shoot­ing skills before buy­ing a device.

In addi­tion, mod­ern Nikon mod­els are very fast. The shut­ter is also respon­si­ble for it, which works on most cur­rent cam­eras in just 1/4000 of a sec­ond, and an advanced image proces­sor. That is why such cam­eras are excel­lent for shoot­ing mov­ing objects or dynam­i­cal­ly chang­ing scenes. They will per­form well when pho­tograph­ing sports events, and in urban use, and even when try­ing to cap­ture the flight of a bride’s bou­quet (we all know how the cost of equip­ment is most often worked out).

For exam­ple, it is advis­able to con­sid­er the flag­ship semi-pro­fes­sion­al mod­el — Nikon D750. Despite the fact that it was launched on the mar­ket back in 2014, it is still rel­e­vant both in terms of tech­ni­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics and capa­bil­i­ties. The D750 is a full-frame SLR cam­era that belongs to the mid­dle price seg­ment (at the time of writ­ing this mate­r­i­al, it costs about 1000 $ in the body pack­age, that is, with­out a lens). Its spec­i­fi­ca­tions include:

1. Clas­sic opti­cal viewfind­er with 100% cov­er­age and com­ple­ment­ed by 0.7x mag­ni­fi­ca­tion;

2. Full frame (35.9x24mm) 24 megapix­el sen­sor;

3. Brand­ed Nikon F mount;

4. 3.2″ non-touch LCD with tilt design;

5. The abil­i­ty to shoot video in Full HD res­o­lu­tion 60 fps;

6. 6.5 fps con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing speed;

7. Stock sen­si­tiv­i­ty ISO 100–12800.

This cam­era — like many oth­ers from Nikon — also has excel­lent low-light capa­bil­i­ties. Although its light sen­si­tiv­i­ty may not seem like a lot, the device deliv­ers sharp, noise-free pho­tos even at high ISO set­tings. This is achieved through the use of a pro­pri­etary image proces­sor.

In addi­tion, thanks to the proces­sor, Nikon cam­eras are char­ac­ter­ized by high per­for­mance dur­ing aut­o­fo­cus. The man­u­fac­tur­er also does not save by plac­ing sen­si­tive sen­sors on the matrix. For exam­ple, in this cam­era there are 51 active points. This ensures fast and accu­rate aut­o­fo­cus, includ­ing when shoot­ing video.

Advan­tages of Nikon cam­eras:

1. High tech­nol­o­gy. When buy­ing equip­ment of this brand, you can be sure that the device will have the newest sen­sor, the fastest proces­sor, the lat­est solu­tions for design and func­tion­al ele­ments;

2. Per­for­mance. Both auto focus and pho­tog­ra­phy will be per­formed at high speed. In addi­tion, even rel­a­tive­ly old mod­els can record video in Full HD 60 fps, and new flag­ship cam­eras even in 4K 60 fps;

3. Uni­ver­sal bay­o­nets. Almost all of the com­pa­ny’s SLR cam­eras, with the excep­tion of some par­tic­u­lar­ly “futur­is­tic” mod­els, are equipped with a Nikon F type lens mount. This means that you can safe­ly use the same optics on dif­fer­ent cam­eras.

Dis­ad­van­tages of Nikon cam­eras:

1. Grad­ual tran­si­tion to a mir­ror­less mech­a­nism. This leads, among oth­er things, to the fact that old lens­es can­not be used on the com­pa­ny’s lat­est cam­eras. In addi­tion, many pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phers refuse to use mir­ror­less cam­eras, pre­fer­ring clas­sic DLSRs for no appar­ent rea­son;

2. Some dif­fi­cul­ty for begin­ners. Even entry-lev­el cam­eras require an under­stand­ing of the basic prin­ci­ples of shoot­ing and man­u­al adjust­ment of a num­ber of oper­at­ing para­me­ters. There are auto­mat­ic modes, but not “advanced” ones;

3. Strange approach to func­tion­al­i­ty. Some cam­eras don’t sup­port bulb expo­sure, oth­ers don’t sup­port sav­ing to sRAW, and so on. Check the required func­tion­al­i­ty before pur­chas­ing.

In gen­er­al, Nikon is a solu­tion for expe­ri­enced pho­tog­ra­phers. And this is man­i­fest­ed not only in the need to adjust the work para­me­ters, but also in the desired post-pro­cess­ing. But with them you can cre­ate a real “dream frame”, although for this you will have to work hard.

So, as your first cam­era, you can choose Canon. At the ama­teur lev­el, Nikon is more inter­est­ing. But in the top seg­ment, every­one is good, and there­fore you should choose based on your needs.