Nikon vs. Canon for the working photographer

I read this blog on Nikon Rumors today and found it very enlightening. It's essentially one working Nikon photographer's experience in shooting Canon for the first time and his evaluation of the differences. I emphasize "working" because it's about an aspect many of us here don't think about - the need to have immediately shareable images straight out of the camera. My brother, as you all know by now, is professional photojournalist and is pretty much required to shoot JPEG since photos need to be uploaded almost immediately after an event for publication. In his words, "I've barely got time to get them transferred to my laptop for upload let alone do a bunch of RAW tweaking. There's no way I can afford to shoot RAW, particularly with sports." In the past he's expressed how impressed he is with the performance of Nikon's sensors, particularly with high ISO, so until I read this blog I didn't quite understand why so many pros shoot Canon.

The article title is a little misleading as this person "switched" because they had to for an event and did not switch permanently. A lot of points he made have me thinking more about what I would do if I needed to post my images straight out of camera?

Guest post: switching from Nikon to Canon | Nikon Rumors

Excellent article! I've never really thought about WiFi, but I'm beginning to see it's usefulness. Perhaps the next model after the D610 will have it and I'll jump. Interesting reading the comparisons between the systems also! Thanks for sharing.

Interesting read. Thanks for posting Jake.

It is interesting... Would anyone here consider a swith??? My guess is no...

Excellent article Jake.... I found it very interesting... I have the WU-1A Wifi plug in for my D7100. While it does NOT lend itself to directly uploading, I can have the pictures go to a cell phone/tablet. From there, I can share single or multiple via email, dropbox, twitter, facebook and more...

I know it is not the same... but the capability can be added quite reasonably... I have just stated playing with mine. Biggest thing I have done is set it to remote monitor and trigger my Camera (Wildlife).

I want to also use it when doing some photo shoots to get a large rendition (tablet) to see if the image is what I want. I have sent some pictures over but the resolution is not what I want.. do not know yet if it is me or my "ancient" tablet! Need to do some more experimenting...

I will do a couple tests to see what "quality" comes out of the transfer from camera, to tablet to upload!

Pat in NH

I've worked with a number of Canon DSLR's, including the 5D Mark II and Mark III cameras with a number of 'L' series lenses - and they are awesome rigs, no question. But, when I compare my keeper rate between the two brands Nikon always comes out on top - and for me that's the bottom line. Just a for-what-it's-worth from someone who has lived with both.

I certainly think NIKON needs to atleast consider various aspects of this article. I love my 5300 WiFi and as just an armature shooting sports in jpeg I share it with schools immediately for there web sites.

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk

Thanks for sharing the article, Jake. I found it quite interesting and informative especially since I am not familiar with a lot of the differences between Nikon and Canon.

RockyNH said:

Excellent article Jake.... I found it very interesting... I have the WU-1A Wifi plug in for my D7100. While it does NOT lend itself to directly uploading, I can have the pictures go to a cell phone/tablet. From there, I can share single or multiple via email, dropbox, twitter, facebook and more...

I know it is not the same... but the capability can be added quite reasonably... I have just stated playing with mine. Biggest thing I have done is set it to remote monitor and trigger my Camera (Wildlife).

I want to also use it when doing some photo shoots to get a large rendition (tablet) to see if the image is what I want. I have sent some pictures over but the resolution is not what I want.. do not know yet if it is me or my "ancient" tablet! Need to do some more experimenting...

I will do a couple tests to see what "quality" comes out of the transfer from camera, to tablet to upload!

Pat in NH

Click to expand...

Pat, this sounds fascinating and I am looking forward to hearing and seeing your results! Please do keep us posted as to this outcome!

Interesting read. The comments afterwards are mostly childish and hilarious, decending into a PC vs Mac debate.
It is pretty incredible that true wifi is missing from nearly all Nikon pro level DSLRs.

RockyNH said:

Excellent article Jake.... I found it very interesting... I have the WU-1A Wifi plug in for my D7100. While it does NOT lend itself to directly uploading, I can have the pictures go to a cell phone/tablet. From there, I can share single or multiple via email, dropbox, twitter, facebook and more...

I know it is not the same... but the capability can be added quite reasonably... I have just stated playing with mine. Biggest thing I have done is set it to remote monitor and trigger my Camera (Wildlife).

I want to also use it when doing some photo shoots to get a large rendition (tablet) to see if the image is what I want. I have sent some pictures over but the resolution is not what I want.. do not know yet if it is me or my "ancient" tablet! Need to do some more experimenting...

I will do a couple tests to see what "quality" comes out of the transfer from camera, to tablet to upload!

Pat in NH

Click to expand...

While it's not quite the same, the Eye-Fi card I just got will do largely what the adapter seems to do, and it's a decent storage mechanism as well. I would love to be able to shoot tethered wireless, straight into Lightroom, but that's not happening with Nikon at the moment - at least not without a significant investment in equipment. Right now I'm only bouncing it to my iPhone, which doesn't give me much more visibility than the display on the back of the camera, but if I had a tablet to use I imagine it would work well. I have a Nook HD+ that runs android apps and will try that soon.

hark said:

Thanks for sharing the article, Jake. I found it quite interesting and informative especially since I am not familiar with a lot of the differences between Nikon and Canon.



Pat, this sounds fascinating and I am looking forward to hearing and seeing your results! Please do keep us posted as to this outcome!

Click to expand...

Hark, will do....

Pat in NH

BackdoorHippie said:

While it's not quite the same, the Eye-Fi card I just got will do largely what the adapter seems to do, and it's a decent storage mechanism as well. I would love to be able to shoot tethered wireless, straight into Lightroom, but that's not happening with Nikon at the moment - at least not without a significant investment in equipment. Right now I'm only bouncing it to my iPhone, which doesn't give me much more visibility than the display on the back of the camera, but if I had a tablet to use I imagine it would work well. I have a Nook HD+ that runs android apps and will try that soon.

Click to expand...

Agree Jake... I also have an EyeFi card and it works well rendering images direct to my tablet... For the record, I seem to think they were better images than my WU1A (from my memory with may be as wet as the snow)

I like the fact that I can monitor via live view what the camera is seeing and even snap the shot when the squirrel hops up into the peanuts!

I also found another android app (DSLRDashboard) that connects to the Nikon... I will be testing that also..

Will share whatever I find with the "crew"

Happy New Year

Pat in NH

It's the obvious way forward (WiFi). Journalism in general is becoming such an instantaneous 'we want the news and pictures now, now NOW!!' industry that I'm suprised that Nikon haven't introduced it in their top-level cameras.

Having said that, the 5300 now has it so maybe the next FX camera will, too?

It's a bit like Apple products though. Their main selling point (excluding desirability) is user friendlyness. iPhone for example doesn't do all that much different to a smartphone that costs £100, but they are so easy and intuitive to use on top of looking great that Apple, with variations on a single model of mobile phone, has almost 20% of the global mobile market.

Canon might have been the first to introduce WiFi but the one that does it best will be the one that wins out in the end.

One negative about having the Wi-Fi embedded in the camera is that if there is new technology or standards it will be harder to update embedded Wi-Fi versus an external adapter. Personally the embedded Wi-Fi is not that big of deal for me. I am more interested in products such as CamRanger for wireless tethered shooting. I use Camera Control Pro 2 quite a bit but it would be nice to work wireless and have the iPad support.

Great article and I plan to stick with Nikon. I think wi-fi would be great, I do have some connection issues with the Eye-Fi card at games and such, but it usually kicks in after a restart. I would prefer to have a device like CamRanger, which is over the top nice, but so is the price. Maybe Pat will have enough success with the Nikon adapter I finally decide to buy it and give it a go, but for now I will just the Eye-Fi.

So with that said, I would like to have a solid solution but I would not use Wi-Fi as a purchase decision when looking at a camera.

Great read that felt very honest and identified very well where user familiarity had/may have influence.

I will start a new thread to discuss the WIFI options as we have at the moment... (rather than D-rail this one more)

Pat in NH