Canon User have a 1 up on Nikon now

[Derrel]

Interesting reading, Derrel. Sad, too. I've noticed that many of the pros in my club have been selling off their Canon gear and picking up the Nikon stuff. I have a friend that accumulates cameras and lenses the way Elizabeth Taylor accumulated husbands, and he's telling me that on technical grounds Canon is falling farther and farther behind. Still many excellent products, but less and less top-of-the-line functionality. Protecting your market pricing by partitioning the feature set is a well-known strategy, but one that is increasingly outmoded when the number of options increase, the the technological pace ramps up. So for the time being, I continue to be a Canon user as I have not yet outgrown the capabilities of the equipment I have, but future equipment purchases will be more and more weighted with the quality of the system behind the equipment.

Canon has made some bad decisions WRT camera design and sensor choices that affect *some* segments of the market...like PJ/sports/low-light...I was watching the SEC Championship game on CBS on Dec 4....the preponderance of Nikon D3 and D3s bodies in the after-game press scrums was SHOCKING.

A few years ago, Canon had some fantastic sensors, far better than what any other manufacturer had. But they stagnated...and Nikon struggled to come out with better products, and Canon lost what they once considered an insurmountable lead. The 1D Mark III autofocus fiasco, and then the full-frame D3 really cost Canon dearly...as did the stagnation of the 20-30-40-50D line when Nikon kept building better and better "amateur" bodies in the D200 and D300 and D90...

Not every segment is so clear-cut, but Nikon has made some huge advances in the High-ISO arena, whereas Canon has had a tougher road due to going with higher-MP count sensors AND I think, neglecting the lower- and mid-level professional action/news/sports/generalist area with the 5D series pitted against a much faster-handling, better-bodied D200-D300-D700...the AF issues of the 5D series, and its lack of new-tech stuff like pop-up flash and wireless flash controller and pro-level autofocus sent an entire bunch of wedding and lower-end (read-small-to mid-level newspaper) shooters back to Nikon.

Even hard-core Canon guys like Michael Reichmann at Luminous Landscape started ragging on Canon for its lack of innovation--and went out and bought Nikon systems.

Canon and Nikon are quite different in many respects. The d-slr era is about 10 years old now, and the "lead" has swung back and forth a couple of times between the two mega-brands. Each system has some very strong points and some very strong equipment, and each system has some glaring weaknesses and some very average offerings--or NO offerings! I myself get a kick out of the entire fanboy culture. I own some Canon stuff. I own some Nikon stuff. I enjoy seeing the two companies go at it head to head. Right now, there are some compelling arguments for Nikon in *some* segments.

They need to do something with the 5D-II though...its a cheap $389 EOS film body with $2000 of sensor and electronics in it. Nikon's D700 has eaten Canon's lunch: Same price point, vastly better body and sub-systems all around, better metering, wireless, built-in flash, with a sensor that's amply good.

Your point is well-taken by me, but not by Canon: "Protecting your market pricing by partitioning the feature set is a well-known strategy, but one that is increasingly outmoded when the number of options increase, the the technological pace ramps up"--YES...Canon's strategy there has begun to hurt them,badly. The market has changed, the game is changing, and Canon's a little bit late on the pendulum swing right now...