On Oct 7, 2:52 pm, Scott W wrote:
flambe wrote:
I just returned from 3 weeks in Europe and Africa.
An informal impression is that Nikon dSLRs significantly outnumbered Canon
dSLRs on those of us touristos schlepping these heavy beasties. That really
surprised me as my impression has been that Canon outsells Nikon.
Most Nikon dSLRs had the 18-200 VR attached and were being carried by
Europeans.
Although I saw one older Japanese gentleman with an 800mm howitzer hanging
from his neck attached to his Canon.
I envied the lens but not the neck pain.
Despite my lifetime investment in higher end cameras and glass I am
seriously thinking that on my next trek I am only going to carry an image
stabilized long zoom EVF type that records in raw.
Who is going to see the pictures that most of us take anyway apart from
friends and family? Personally and aesthetically satisfying results can be
had without having to schlep pounds and pounds of gear . . .
It may be time to find my old Ebay account number and empty the closet.

My impression is that in the last couple of years Nikon has been
catching up pretty fast and I would not be surprised if they are selling
more cameras at this point in time (I have no data on this).

Nikon has also finally gotten into the truly high end with the D3, or at
least they will have once they get it to market.

As for going to a EVF camera to replace a DSLR that is something that
only you can decide, how much weight you are willing to haul around is
something that only you know. You might want to look at some of the 4/3
cameras, for the same focal length range they are a fair bit smaller.

I spent a lot of time shooting with a EVF camera, a Sony F828 and now I
shoot with either a 350D or a 20D. EVF cameras have improved a fair bit
since the time of the F828 but there are still two problems that are ard
to over come, they don't do very well at high ISO settings and they are
far slower at focusing then a DSLR.

As far as image quality goes, if you are not making print larger then 8
x 10 inches it will be hard to see a difference, if you had good light
when you took the photo and if the timing of the shot was not critical.
I know I am getting shots now with the DSLRs that I would have had
trouble getting with the F828, or any other EVF camera for that matter.

The other thing I notice is that using a DSLR is just a lot more fun for
me, YMMV. I really like the responsive feel it give me, push the button
and it takes the photo right then. If you are shooting landscapes this
will not matter much, but if you are photographing sport, animals or
people this can make a world of difference.

And it does not have to be a one or the other kind of thing, my wife and
I own a couple of DLSRs and a number of point and shoot digitals. We
take the right camera for the job, which is usually a DSLR but sometime
you want something really like and compact.

Scott

Looking through the history of digital camera (Through wikipedia or
the timeline provided in dpreview), it is not surprising that Nikon is
still doing well in Europe. Sometimes a perception or popularity of a
camera does not go across the continent. In North America, perhaps it
is true that Canon is the leading the pack at the moment. However, the
history indicated that the first professional digital camera, the
Nikon D1 was introduced in June 1999. Canon only was able to match
that by the introduction of its EOS-1D in Sept 2001, 2 years behind
Nikon's first DSLR. Looking back through the history, the frontiers
of the digital cameras appear to be Sony, Fuji, Kodak and Olympus.
Perhaps this was also unthinkable in the eye of people in this part of
the world.... where everybody's talk is only about Canon and Nikon. I
recall a Sony Mavica digital camera using a 1.5 inch. computer
diskette in the early 1990s in a photo store in South east Asia. The
first digital camera was Fujifilm, introduced in 1988, and that camere
did not even come to North America. Kodak introduced digital cameras
in the early 1990s too. At that time, both Nikon and Canon were far
behind, and perhaps still boasting their superiority in film SLR
(Canon A-1, Nikon F-1, etc).

Talking about these two brand cameras, I am surprised that Nikon was
not making a big fuss intially about the naming of its rival camera in
2001. Nikon's official camera names are Nikon D1, D2, D3, D50, D70,
D200, D300, etc. Canon's official names, on the other hand are Canon
EOS 1D, 2D, 5D, 10D, 30D, 40D, 300D, 350D, etc. Nowadays, people both
refers just the letter and the numbers only, such as 5D means Canon
5D, and D200 means Nikon D200. But the numbering system suddenly
clashed recently with the introduction of the new Canon 40D versus
Nikon D40 and D40x, as well as Nikon's new D300 vs. the older Canon
350D or 400D (Rebel Xti). So 40D is Canon and D40 is Nikon....... a
very confusing brand numbering system!