Thinking of abandoning Canon..... or not!

Take a look at what ISO invariance means in a REAL-world sense. Canon lags way behind in this.

Nikon D750 Review For Wedding Photography - DIY Photography

Look at the BLACK frame, and then the "lift"...no objectionable noise, no banding....this is Sony's EXMOR-technology..and it has been paired with Nikon's electronics experience and Nikon's signal-processing experience in all Nikon cameras that use this technology. This is one of many articles that show people what this new sensor tech really means. Some day Canon might decide it needs to offer its users something similar, but right now they are too busy mnaintaining their sales leadership position with big-time TV commercial buys during the Olympics and football matches and during prime-time TV shows and magazine advertisements.

Canon is the #1 Camera-seller in the world, Nikon is #2, Sony is a distant third. Canon and Nikon have HUGE, expansive systems behind them, and a BIG market for used gear sales. SOny has a much,much narrower system that is less than a decade old, and a fairly smalkl used equipment market.

A guy really doe not need "a lot" for most things: on FF sensor, a 24,35,50,85, and a 70-200 f/4 or f/2.8 zoom, maybe a 100mm macro lens, a few speedlights, and a few umbrellas, a couple of softboxes, some light stands, some triggers, some hard drives, Lightroom, and a few other bits and pieces.

Look at the CIPA industry sales numbers: Canon is #1,Nikon #2, Sony #3, and ALL the rest have miniscule, tiny sales numbers, in the hundreds of thousands of cameras world-wide, or less. About what Canon sells in a month, and what Nikon sells in six weeks. Pentax,Fuji,Olympus, and Panasonic have "hobby business" interest in cameras; this week I read that Ricoh might "kill off" their Pentax brand, which tbhey boiught from (?) Hoya five years ago.

Canon, Nikon, Sony: any one could do the job for you.
 
If money were no object I'd probably prefer Canon over Nikon by a small margin. But really it's a toss-up in the long-term for a professional, especially if you don't have any specific reasons to go for one or the other. I haven't kept up with Sony, their stuff is great for prosumers, but I'm not sure whether they're a safe bet long-term for a professional (considering you're on a budget and switching around would be a financial hassle I imagine).

Canon certainly has a better track record for not having huge warranty issues. Nikon's D600 and D750 both were blunders in my opinion... totally lost faith in the company's ability to get things right on release.
Both the 70D and 7D II have their share of AF issues so while no doubt Nikon had it share of QC issues Canon has them too.
 
It's funny still seeing he comments about Sonys being "prosumer" lol

Ever since the A7R2 release they over took Canon or Nikon and I made the switch. I have not one single thing I regret about it.

Until you try one for real you can't know how much better they are it's incredible

I bought on me A7R2 and I was going to keep my D810 as the "real serious camera"

That weekend I shot 2 weddings in a row and I couldn't believe it. The Nikon just couldn't keep up in any aspect. Low light both focus and noise the Sony killed it, functionality is amazing once you've had a day or 2 with it to set it up, and the lenses... my god they are magic.

And This is coming from someone that had the best Nikons and the best lenses m, even the 105mm f1.4.

Nikon and Canon are old school and old tech. Give it a year maybe 2 and they will be seriously struggling to stay on board.

Sony have already over taken Nikon in sales


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Every time you do pro work with a camera that has one SD card its a gamble, small one but still gamble.
I would be a nervous wreck if I had one SD card when I shoot weddings, two of my co photographers use 6D and I don't get it why would they risk it with one SD card.
I just checked the A7R II few days ago at the camera store, yeap its a great camera but the lack of second SD card meast I will never be able to use it for pro work.
One more thing the AF was snappy and great but in low light and low contrast it still was hunting a bit more then my D750.
No doubt it can do a great job in weddings but if I would go with Sony I think at the moment the ONLY camera I would feel totally comfortable would be the new A9
 
I've noticed far more people abandoning Canikon and embracing Olympus. Better is the enemy of Good.
For the life of me I wouldnt understand why would they do that, I have Olympus, nice toy but the AF on it is not serious for pro work.
For people who want to go light and have nice low light performance then its great but that's about it
 
It's funny still seeing he comments about Sonys being "prosumer" lol

Ever since the A7R2 release they over took Canon or Nikon and I made the switch. I have not one single thing I regret about it

Let's not twist words. I said Sony is an excellent choice for prosumers. Any choice that is excellent for a prosumer will undoubtedly be a good choice for a certain range of professionals as well.

The reason why I issued words of warning about Sony is because their foray into the full-frame DSLR market has been markedly different from Nikon or Canon... and they haven't been doing the whole full frame lens lineup Nikon and Canon have for so long. I agree, Sony is an excellent choice. However, newness in a market is something to consider. Yes, I am aware Sony produces great sensors for Nikon.

If I were to purchase my equipment all over again, I would highly consider Sony. If I were professional, I'd probably just stick with what I've got and expand on it. For the OP who is in a position to switch due to a change in sensor format, I'd say there's probably no wrong answer as far as brand goes (especially for someone with fairly typical, general professional needs). I don't know about how Sony operates with studio lighting, I'm assuming that's all fine.
 
MAKE THE RIGHT CHOICE LUKE! JOIN THE LIGHT SIDE - NIKON!
 
I switched from Canon to Sony so I guess I'll throw some thoughts into the hat about that experience.

For a bit of information about me to help you figure out where I'm coming from and what I need out of my camera system... I shoot mostly portraits and some events, no weddings. I do a lot of boudoir, have a fairly brisk business during certain times of the year doing fantasy and cosplay shoots... And I have fairly steady business doing commissioned fetish photography. I mention the last because it involves a lot of intricate lighting solutions for shibari/rope suspension work and a lot of the other stuff involves very challenging lighting situations where I'm required to be as unobtrusive as possible or work in nightclubs with ridiculous rave style seizure inducing type of lighting.

I loved my Canon equipment. There's a quality to the way Canon renders skin that is just so hard to replicate. And in my business skin is big. You are already a Canon shooter though so I don't really need to talk about them.

I switched to Sony a while back when a good friend passed and left me all of his gear. At first I didn't take it very seriously... But after I took that A7rII out and put it through its paces a few times the camera quickly grew on me.

I'm going to talk about things that are specific to the A7rII even though it isn't on your list because I think it will give you a good idea as to how the Sony ecosystem still needs to mature a bit for more serious shooting. That said... I sold all of my Canon gear off scant weeks after first seriously playing with the Sony. I cannot recall a time that I've missed it or felt lacking at a shoot.

It's a small camera. Even with the battery grip installed there is something sort of dainty about the way it feels in my hand. The setup isn't light, though. Most of the time I have the 24-70 f2.8 G Master mounted. It's beefy, It weighs more than the camera itself. 82mm threads... Without the battery grip that lens seriously makes the whole camera feel off balance and unwieldy.

Focusing in low light with the camera can be somewhat challenging at first... Even if you buy a flash with a focus assist beam it won't work with the a7rII af... other Sony models without phase detect af aren't affected by this complaint. This is exacerbated by the position of the af assist lamp on the camera itself... The larger more serious glass in their line is so big it blocks the af assist lamp. With the 24-70 it blocks over half the light from the lamp.

The menu system is a complete and utter mess. Luckily you can customize your own function menu so you don't have to dig through the main menu very often. There are memory shooting profiles that help even more.

The shutter button feels awful... I hate it. It is spongy and something just feels so off in the 2 stage press.


There isn't a lot of glass in the lineup, But honestly at this point they have all the important lenses covered. And let me tell you, those gmasters are downright magical, absolutely beautiful color rendering and so sharp. The gmasters all have a focus hold button on the barrel that I use constantly but that button too is configurable if you want it to do something else. I was skeptical about focus-by-wire, but honestly it has never once even been an after thought. It's also nice that every single native lens can be left in autofocus mode but still adjusted manually on the fly. The fact that when you do manually adjust focus the viewfinder can automatically magnify right into your focus point for extremely fine adjustment is massive. And you can see focus peaking in the viewfinder in real time as you focus... If that's your thing. It's important to note that I only use native glass and I have absolutely no intention of ever trying to work with an adapter again... There is just no sense in it.

I thought the Eye AF would be just a gimmick... But the truth is I use it constantly. When you have multiple people moving around randomly in the sorts of situations I find myself in, it can be challenging to nail an environmental portrait and have the eyes be tack sharp. The eye af is magical... It sticks to their iris like glue, I've never gotten a shot out of it where the lashes were the point of focus... Even on the rare occasion I go wide open. My hit rate during moments of action and movement has gone through the roof. Did I mention when I want to start eye af all I have to do is press 1 button? When the scene suddenly starts getting kinetic I can respond to the changing conditions in the time it takes me to move my finger to the button I have it set on. It is important to note you can't and don't want to leave eye af running all the time... Whatever button you have it set to has to be held down the entire time you use it. I see it as more of a reactionary tool than a standard operating condition.

At events I can register peoples faces in the camera... Give each face a priority and then the tracking system can recognize who the important people are in your shot and adjust the location of your focus zone to make sure their faces are always in focus. Normally that might not sound super useful... But it greatly reduces my response time to unexpected moments that I absolutely want to get a good photo of... Selecting a new focus point can take too much time and recomposing after focus has its own problems. It isn't a replacement to experience and intuition, but it definitely increases my hit rate and makes me even more dynamic in the moment.

Battery life is what is... And it sucks. I rarely shoot without the battery grip though so it isn't a huge deal. If you've got the camera customized to the way you shoot, battery consumption can be reduced a little, and batteries are very fast to replace. To be honest it's been pretty much a non issue for me... I have missed shots a couple times when I didn't plan a battery change ahead of time. The most battery changes I've ever needed to make was 2 in a full day shooting.

The flash situation sucks. Right now I'm using godox flashes with a commander... It's so nice too have high speed sync again... Ttl isn't a big deal for me but they have that too. I despise the plastic shoes on them... I suspect it is a product of that proprietary Sony multi interface hotshoe... And frankly there aren't enough things that use it to make having plastic shoes on flaws a thing.

Silent shooting mode is dreamy... I love it when I need it. Plenty of other cameras have it, but honestly... This thing goes dark side of the force stealth mode.

Weather sealing is terrible. Particularly at the lens mount itself... I would not shoot this camera as it is in any sort of extreme environmental conditions. I don't have any evidence to prove it would be a considerable risk, my paranoia on the subject is entirely self produced. Holi powder fight portrait sessions are particularly popular in my area right now... The precautions i feel i need to take to protect my lens and camera from the powder may or may not be entirety overboard... I'm not particularly in a hurry to test out though.

I've probably logged somewhere around 35,000 shutter actuations with that camera now, maybe a little less. I hope the novella I just wrote helps. Feel free to ask any questions. If I don't know I'll try to find out.

EDITED TO ADD: In body stabilization is absolutely tops... I love it. I get image stabilization with every lens I use. But there's an aspect I never see anyone mention... When you mount a native lens that also has stabilization the two systems start actively communicating and working together to produce absolutely stunning sharpness.




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Sony make pretty much all the sensor that go into cameras nowadays with the exception of Canon who make there own. Why do the rest go Sony because there good, that isn't the only reason but thats for the industrial economics forum. Since I bought my first camera and looked at the comparing sites it always seemed to me that Canon trailed behind Nikon slightly in terms of spec, in a like for like price range comparison.

But if you have gear that is transferrable from your current setup then you may want to consider how much money that would save you.
 
She depends on NPS at big events and loves her D810 more than she loves me.
tell her sony made that wonderful sensor...
 
What I want to achieve:
-Higher resolution pictures
-Better image quality
-Better low light performance
-More dynamic range
These qualities are the benchmark of Sony and Nikon. For professional use, I would go Nikon because of the depth and breadth of the Nikon professional system. Canon has a comparable professional system but (imho) lags behind Nikon/Sony in the qualities you are wanting to achieve. Sony has the IQ you are after but may not be able to offer you all the tools you need for whatever it is you are wanting to do.
 
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Just do it. I left Canon for Nikon like two years ago and never looked back. Crazy that the 5d4 can barely compete with the dynamic range of the old d610
 
Have you considered Pentax (K-1). Meets all your requirements.

Which would be especially fun when Ricoh finally buries Pentax.
 

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