Which Is The Best Camera Brand.

Who makes the best DSLRs, Canon or Nikon? or somebody else? It’s the impossible question. But both Canon and Nikon have been developing very high quality products over many decades. Canon and Nikon remain the two biggest players in the DSLR market, having launched a veritable feast of new cameras over the past few years. Both are obvious leaders in camera technology. Sony is also catching up fast. There are some other brands such as Pentax, Olympus, Panasonic and Fuji that have also been doing well in the market. 

The age-old question of which brand to side with can be a tricky one to answer, A feature that a rival DSLR offers today will appear in some form in the other camera system tomorrow. The fact is, Canon and Nikon offer some of the best cameras, lenses, flash systems and accessories – and they have done for years.

In my opinion the truth is neither is better than the other. This is often confusing for someone about to buy their first DSLR camera. Choosing the brand is very important because it will affect your future purchases. This is because all brands make their tools proprietary. You cannot mount a Nikon lens on a Canon body and vice versa the same goes for almost all other brands.  The same applies to pretty much all other proprietary tools such as external flash units, body grips, batteries, etc. Once you choose a brand, it is extremely hard to switch to another one, because you would basically have to get rid of everything that is incompatible and replace it with the brand you are switching to, which will cost you big time. Therefore, choose your brand very carefully. And whichever company you choose, you’re investing in an extensive, well-supported system that caters for everyone, from beginners to experts, from wild life photographers to fashion photographer.

Every company has its own advantages and disadvantages. I am mentioning few points below which I feel I should share with you. But remember this is solely my opinion.

Canon places all the main settings and knobs around the LCD screen like white balance, auto focus etc  where they are easily found. Whereas Nikon requires photographers to take a couple more steps when changing settings. However, as far as changing your camera settings are concerned, it doesn’t really matter when you get used to. But some find Nikon easier to navigate.

Canon offer a larger choice of lenses to suit all budgets and needs, from general purpose, EF-S lenses, and professional L series lenses. Nikon on the other hand doesn't have a naming label or a lens tier system. All Nikon lenses are built to a high standard. You can be assured that the lens that is packaged in your camera kit when purchasing a Nikon is of a higher standard than those packaged with a Canon kit. If you are looking to purchase a camera and won't be investing in extra lenses any time in future then Nikon is the way to go.

All Canon digital SLR cameras come with photo editing software. Nikon does not come with any such software and will need to be purchased separately. But most of the photographers today use photoshop or lightroom.

The colours from Canon cameras are different from Nikon cameras. My personal feeling is that you get nice skin tone from Canon camera. ie. skin tones from canon Camera looks better and natural as compared to Nikon cameras. But in Nikon cameras the colour nicely pop out ie the blue sky looks more blue, the green trees looks greener, the red balloon looks very red and so on as compared to Canon Cameras.

The focusing points in Canon cameras are smaller compared to Nikons. Small focusing points means its just a dot and in Nikon it’s a small box. This could be an advantage as well as a disadvantage. This happens mostly for entry level dslrs where there are only 9-11 focusing points. With canons you can exactly focus on your tiny subject but for that you will have to compromise on the image composition as you have to place the focusing point exactly on the subject. In Nikons while focusing on your tiny subject sometimes the background also could be in focus as the focusing point is bigger (small box) than the subject or slight movement can cause to shift the focus on the background. Here you wont have to compromise on the image composition as the focusing points are bigger and even when any corner of the box of focusing points falls on the subject it gets focused.

For Nikon In entry level cameras, the low light performance is decent compared to Canons.

                    

Even the entry level cameras of Nikon have higher Dynamic Range which is not so in Canons.

Auto Exposure Bracketing is available on all or most of the models on Canon which is not so in Nikons.

Now if you look at Sony E mount cameras then :

They are mirror less and much smaller and lighter.

Exists from entry level to semi-pro.

Using an adapter, virtually any lens can be used on the E-mount.

The lens are not very impressive. Especially if you are looking into the full frame lenses, but this is compensated by the for other ability to use adapters brands.

Entry level cameras have got the best low light performance.

Has got similar performance in the Dynamic Range as the Nikons.

If you ask for my opinion on what brand to go for, my answer is “either Canon or Nikon”. So go for whichever brand between these that has the better price deal at the time of purchase.

Despite the tremendous growth in DSLR market and new emerging players such as Sony, both Canon and Nikon sell more DSLRs than any other brand in the market, have solid records of outstanding performance, spend lots of money on R&D, provide the most choice of lenses & other accessories and have excellent customer service. You would not go wrong with either of the brands, because they compete head to head and continuously release pioneering products.

In fact, it’s quite common to find photographers swapping systems, moving from Canon to Nikon or from Nikon to Canon. This is largely dependent on which manufacturer has just leapfrogged the other in technology, whether that’s a new lens the other lacks or a camera body that set the new benchmark in auto focus or high ISO performance.

No matter what camera system you pick or use today, you most likely pay a lot of attention to other brands. If you own a Nikon camera, you look at Canon cameras and compare. The thing is, the grass is always greener on the other side when it comes to cameras and lenses.

Finally, you have to remember that a camera is just a tool in a photographer’s bag. Without the photographer’s skill set, patience, vision, creativity, planning, timing, lighting and post-processing, even the best camera in the world will not be able to create a good picture.