Canon Rebel XTi (400D) vs. Nikon D80

[beavo451]

2) Canon's L glass (professional series lenses) are superior to Nikon's professional glass.

Are they really? If Canon is better, it would only be very slightly. Having seen many shots from either system, I really can't tell a real world difference.

 

[clintob]

Are they really? If Canon is better, it would only be very slightly. Having seen many shots from either system, I really can't tell a real world difference.

The truth of this Canon/Nikon debate is probably right there. If you have a decent body, and equivalent lenses (both professional glass), and set up the same shot with each camera, it would take some serious loupe studying to really see a difference.

The differences are subtle... Nikkor glass tends to be a little higher contrast, Canon glass tends to be a little more crisp. I personally have found Canon's wide angle lenses to show a bit less distortion than most, but that could very well be a personal experience since frankly every lens, no matter how carefully constructed, is a little different.

If you put good glass on your average or better body, you're going to be happy with your results. If you're not, you're too picky and need a new hobby.

 

[compuwar]

From my experience as a photojournalist I've seen more pros with Canons than Nikon. MOst of them like myself used to shoot with

This is true, Canon's much larger and has better marketing, they have probably 2x the professional market share of Nikon, and that's not likely to change.

Nikons but switched because Canon's camera bodies and lenses provided superior overall performance. Thats due to the lense systems were able to focus faster and more accurately than Nikon and the pro bodies had easier

This isn't true. 1. Most pros "switched" because Canon offered their newspapers/magazines gear at ridiculously low prices- the only way to get folks to switch if they have a heavy investment in lenses and several bodies.

Outside of wedding photographers, the bulk of professional photographers are in the media industry where their employers furnish the gear.

more intuitive controls. Nikon has improved quite a bit in the last 4 years, but still doesn't have a full frame sensor or the has anything close to the resolving power of Canons 12 and 16 megapixel cameras.

Actually, Nikon's controls and handling really haven't materially changed since at least the 8008s days, which would be ~1989 if I rembmer correctly. As for full-frame, a full-frame sensor would need to be ~30 megapixels to get the same sensor resolution as my D2x has at 12.4MP. In fact, most of the reviews when the D2x came out raved at its resolution compared to the Canon 1DS MkII which cost twice as much at the time.

I use a EOS 1D, 8 MP file size, but if I was to buy another camera it would be a 5D because its a 12MP file.

If the size of the file is your criteria for switching camera bodies, then I'd question your evaluation criteria pretty seriously. It's not all about megapixels, in fact, the more megapixels the more you're going to run into diffraction limitations due to the size of the photosites.

AS far as glass goes both Canon and Nikon are equally good. You wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the 2 of them on image quality.

This is also true.

 

[compuwar]

Everything has a price. The price of Nikon's greater pixel density (and hence greater resolving power) is an increased amount of noise.

It's also worth pointing out that Canon does a lot more noise reduction in the camera's firmware than Nikon does, but for 3200 shots, currently Canon is the choice to make. Personally, I hardly ever shoot above ISO 400, but if I did, I'd probably have a Canon.

The difference is most marked at ISO 3200, but that's a setting that you'd not use unless there was no other way you could get the shot. It appears, though, that Nikon encourages D2X users to go no further than ISO 800, whilst Canon encourages 20D (for example) users to stop at ISO 1600.

I'm not sure if the "Hi" designation is discouragement or if it's how many LCD segments they had, or some other reason. However the latest firmware updates add 1000 and 1250 spots to the Hi range and seem to reduce blue channel noise in all of the high ISO ranges. At this point though, it's difficult to tell if Nikon is sticking to the designation because the older 4MP pro bodies did suck at high ISO and they want to keep nomenclature compatibility or if it's just their faith in the current sensors.

Whether or not this is an issue for you depends on what you want to shoot, of course.

The other point, of course, is that you're not going to be able to take advantage of that greater resolving power without spending big dollars on glass. But then, to buy a D2X (or a 5D, or a 1Ds) and then stick a $200 zoom lens on it is to spend thousands of dollars on a $300 point-and-shoot.

Indeed, the D2x and D200 bodies have shown flaws in a few lenses that were fine on 6MP bodies.