After a looong thought and much hesitation, I’ve finally decided to move to canon’s arch-enemy, nikon systems, as a start for this new year. So I gathered all my courage and ordered a nikon Full frame D700, as i knew my next camera has to be a full frame. But unfortunately, I’ve been waiting for the 5D replacement a year ago and was very excited over canon’s announcement over 2008 photokina. However, the 5DII’s spec is very much a disappointment for me. 21 mpx? I’m not sure if canon did any market survey on how many people needs a 21 mpx camera, definitely not me, so I would only use its sRAW which is 10mpx, still enough for my wedding work and landscape as I do not do large printing. The 3 year old autofocus? The ancient 9 plus 6 invisible autofocus point dated back in 1st generation 5D days, in which performance is crappier than a 50D? How is 5DII gonna compete in the coming 3 years until its replacement comes by? On top of that, I have to put up with possible chances of banding problems in sRAW mode, the mode in which i’ll be using and black dots all over my images on blown out highlights. The only thing I see fancy is the ISO performance which is pretty similar to D700, other than that, I don’t see a point on spending that much money on such a camera. hmm… in fact, I don’t understand why 5DII is even out of stock everywhere. So, how about the old 5D? The price for the old 5D is still RM7k, and a D700 costs only RM7.5k. For 500 extra, I get to upgrade to a newer system.
Those of you who knows me will know how much a big fan I am of canon, I’ve owned a few canon lens and body. I started from the very old 350D, up to a 30D, and 50D with a few nice L lenses and wide angles. Not a huge investment compared to those with 300mm f2.8L or big white sticks, but I suppose I do have put in quite a large amount to my gears.
My D700 came yesterday, I took the camera out from its box, my first thought was, will I ever be able to manage so many buttons? Nikon cameras has buttons all over the place, where as a Canon 50D looks like it has 2X less than it. Of course, Nikon doesnt have the big dial like canon, damn i’m gonna miss that big dial. After a few shots and manual readings, I find these buttons are great! They are like shortcuts for autofocus modes, I can flip between these modes in a flash without looking into the mini LCD, press the AF button and guess which dial should I dial to swap modes(sometimes i just forgets which dial i need to use to change modes on a 50D after you select the function change)
So far, the d700 has been performing extremely well on every shot I take. All I can say is its really putting my canon to shame. Every feature, every function nikon puts in their camera has a photographer’s thought in it. For example, the eyepiece shutter. Yes, Nikon has an EYEPIECE SHUTTER!! As for the canon, you have to MANUALLY remove the eyepiece, and try very hard to cover the viewfinder with a piece of crappy rubber which comes along in the strap. What is that ancient manual crap? and maybe most of the canon users do not know what the hell is that rubber stucked in the strap if they do not read the manual.
So far, I’m still going through the manual for my D700, its like a dictionary, I suppose the size of manual comes in proportion to the number of buttons you have on camera, the manual is 2X thicker than the 50D. Will post more of my thoughts of Nikon camera from a Canon user point of view in my next blog. Stay tune.
The really thick nikon manual
My D700
Yes, definitely, when it comes to mpx resolution, the d700 definitely aren’t anywhere near Canon. For me, 12 mpx is pretty much sufficient for most of my work, as I do not do any huge prints more than A1 size. Saving up lots of memory space as well especially in an event coverage.
by Victor
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